Navy 250 DFS Preview: Truck Picks at San Diego Coronado

The Truck Series opens a brand-new venue Friday night, and it may be the most chaotic race on the board all year. The street circuit at Naval Base Coronado is among the most difficult, technical layouts the series has ever run — narrow, wall-lined, low-grip, and with almost no room for error. If you've watched any of the simulator previews, the picture is clear: expect cautions, long pace laps, and a running order that gets shuffled every time the field bunches up. We got a small taste of what this can look like at St. Petersburg earlier this year, and that race rewarded survival as much as speed.

Layne Riggs opens as the betting favorite (+250), but we're not convinced any single driver has a real advantage here. On a track no one has turned a competitive lap on, the gap between the "best" truck and the 15th-best truck is far narrower than a normal week — and one wall tag erases it entirely.

How we're modeling a track with zero history

We lean on road-course history as the primary predictor here, because it's the closest analog we have. But it's an imperfect one, and worth saying plainly: road courses and street courses are not the same discipline. Street circuits have no run-off room, far rougher and more variable surfaces, and punish mistakes with walls instead of grass. Strong road-course form is a hint, not a guarantee — success at Watkins Glen or COTA doesn't automatically transfer to a concrete street fight.

This is also a brand-new venue, so our street-circuit tuning is a reasoned first calibration, not a data fit. Once practice runs, we'll have real signal and will retune. Treat everything below as a strong prior, not gospel.

The sim's top of the board

Our 10,000-race simulation centers the slate on three names:

• Kaden Honeycutt ($9,900) — the model's clear No. 1: 27.4% win, 59.6% optimal, the highest in both on the slate. He's reportedly run 400+ laps in the Toyota simulator over the last two weeks, which is exactly the kind of prep that matters most when no one has real reps.
• Ty Majeski ($8,800) — 16.9% win, 41.2% optimal. Strong road-course racer at a discount to the chalk.
• Chandler Smith ($9,200) — 12.4% win, 34.2% optimal. Rounds out the high-floor tier.

Notably, Riggs ranks just sixth in our win projection (7.4%) despite the shortest odds — the clearest sign the model sees this as wide open rather than a one-truck race.

Values and leverage

This is where a chaos race pays off — the optimal-lineup rates surface cheaper trucks the market is sleeping on:

• Adam Andretti ($6,700) — quietly an A-tier play at 43.3% optimal. Low win equity, but a salary-saving optimal-lineup staple.
• Parker Kligerman ($8,400) — a proven road-course winner who, frankly, should be priced higher. 37.8% optimal at this number is strong, and his +5000 odds are a GPP dart worth taking.
• Daniel Hemric ($7,800, 34.0% optimal) and Christian Eckes ($8,900, 33.5%) — both project well above their price as floor plays.

Names to be careful with

• Jimmie Johnson ($8,500) — more street-course pedigree than almost anyone in the field, but his final IndyCar seasons left a lot to be desired, and he has little Truck Series history to lean on. The model likes his ceiling (34.1 mean DK, 33.2% optimal) but gives him 0% win equity — a tournament-only, get-it-right-or-it's-dead play.
• Giovanni Ruggiero ($9,600) — a top composite ranking, but at this salary the 14.8% optimal makes him one of the priciest trucks to fit.
• Connor Mosack ($9,300) — strong on paper (No. 4 composite), but 1.0% win / 5.5% optimal makes him the slate's biggest price-to-production gap. Easy fade.

Bottom line

The composite power rankings (Riggs, Ruggiero, Majeski up top) reward the best raw road-course profiles. The DFS sim, which layers in salary, chaos, and ceiling, tilts toward Honeycutt, Majeski, and Smith at the top with Andretti, Kligerman, and Hemric as the values. In a survival race on an unknown track, build for ceiling, embrace the variance, and don't overpay for a "favorite" no one can confidently name.