Last week, Ryan Blaney became the first playoff driver to punch his ticket to the Round of 8 by winning the Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. On Sunday, the Cup Series returns to Kansas Speedway for the 2nd race in the Round of 12 for the Cup Series playoffs for the running of the Hollywood Casino 400. As things currently stand, Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Tyler Reddick, and Bubba Wallace are among the drivers that are below the cutline and will need strong results to keep the championship hopes within reach. As the race for the championship continues, we turn our focus towards identifying the best betting opportunities for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400!
Back in early May, Kyle Larson picked up his 3rd win of the season in the AdventHealth 400. Larson won the pole and dominated the race by leading 221 of 267 laps en route to victory. At the time, it was Larson’s 3rd win in the opening 12 races of the season and the former champion appeared to be emerging as the championship favorite. Little did anyone know, that would be Larson’s last win on the season as the #5 team has fallen into a slump during the 2nd half of the season. In fact, Larson has failed to capture a single Top 5 finish in the last 8 races and enters this weekend’s race at Kansas desperately needing another strong Kansas performance to regain their momentum.
For this week’s return to Kansas, I find things very tricky from a handicapping perspective because the Cup Series has not competed at a non-drafting 1.5 mile speedway since the Coca Cola 600 back in May. While we have data to compare how teams have performed thus far this season on the intermediate 1.5 mile layouts, it has been nearly 4 months since teams have raced on a similar layout. Have any teams/manufacturers gained or lost speed, with their intermediate setups, during that time-period? Those are the things that we must consider going into the weekend and perhaps pay more attention to recent momentum as opposed to prior performances earlier this year on the 1.5 mile layouts. As a result, we will need to consider many different variables as we handicap Sunday’s return to Kansas!
One of my favorite handicapping metrics at the 1.5 mile layouts is our dynamic averages which provides performance metrics from the last 5 races at similar tracks. As you will see in the metrics, the Hendrick Motorsports trio of Kyle Larson, William Byron, and Alex Bowman own the top 3 average driver ratings and perhaps we should mention that Chase Elliott is also in the 6th position which means all Hendrick Motorsports drivers are within the top 6 in average performance metrics. Josh Berry and Tyler Reddick are the only other drivers to post a measly +85 average driver rating as the metrics significantly drop off after the top 6 drivers. As a result, I think that is something we have to consider despite the amount of time that has transpired since the Cup Series competed at a 1.5 mile layout!
When qualifying concluded on Saturday, Chase Briscoe emerged at the top of the speed charts with his 7th pole of the season. Briscoe posted a fast lap of 180.078mph to edge out teammate Denny Hamlin for the top spot. Behind the Joe Gibbs Racing duo, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, and Christopher Bell compiled at very prestigious top 5 starting positions. While qualifying results are semi-indicative of potential speed, I would like to discuss practice observations for our handicapping purposes. In practice, I thought Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin were easily the best cars during the session. Both Larson and Hamlin were in the second group and posted some of the best lap averages of anyone. Considering both drivers’ resumes at Kansas, it appears that they will be contenders yet again.
Behind the Hamlin/Larson duo, Christopher Bell, Erik Jones, and Chris Buescher were among the drivers that stood out on the stopwatch. Jones was in the opening practice group which had slightly more favorable track conditions. However, Jones was fast enough compared to the competition to warrant a noteworthy observation. Behind those names, it was relatively difficult to evaluate long-run speed as several teams only ran a handful of laps. There were also a handful of teams that ran into problems including the Team Penske duo of Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano. Both Blaney and Logano had tires go down in practice. While Logano avoided any damage, Blaney hit the wall and was forced into a backup car. There were several other drivers that appeared to be struggling with handling issues and chose to work on the cars as opposed to running a significantly large number of laps.
I am sort of conflicted because the Hendrick Motorsports cars have been really strong this year on the 1.5 mile layouts however they have not been very good in recent weeks. Kyle Larson’s ability to continuously search for grip and drive the car in loose conditions is a perfect fit for Kansas which he has proven with 3 wins in the last 8 starts. While I will never rule out Larson at Kansas, I am gunshy on backing the #5 due to the lack of speed they have shown throughout the summer months. For those reasons, I am more inclined to back the likes of Denny Hamlin and even Christopher Bell as my top handicapping options this week. The Toyota teams have been showing a lot of speed in recent weeks and those two drivers are extremely good at Kansas. Therefore, I will take the slightly better betting value and back the Toyotas among the outright betting favorites this week.
Behind the top 3-4 guys, Chase Briscoe is among the drivers that is very tempting at better than 10-1 odds. Briscoe has been one of the hottest drivers this summer and is coming off a 4th place finish in the spring at Kansas. Based on the speed of the #19, Briscoe deserves betting consideration. As we move deeper into the field, Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher are among the drivers that have sharp dark horse value. Blaney’s tire failure in practice combined with the fact he will be starting from the rear have provided some of the best value on the #12 car. Meanwhile, Buescher is among the drivers that I thought had some of the best long-run speed in practice and also hits a few other handicapping metrics. For those reasons, I believe both drivers can be considered in all betting formats. For even deeper options, Noah Gragson and Zane Smith are a pair of drivers that have far higher upside than current betting odds suggest. Both Gragson and Smith are getting 150-1 odds and while I don’t believe they necessarily have winning upside, they both have solid value in prop bet and fantasy formats!
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