2026 Black’s Tire 200 Betting Race Picks

Rockingham Motor Speedway Corby Northamptonshire

2026 Black’s Tire 200 Betting Race Picks

Date/Time: Friday April 3rd, 2026. 4:30PM (EST)
Where: Rockingham Speedway
TV: FS1

For the first Sunday since the Daytona 500, NASCAR’s Cup Series will be sidelined as they enjoy a break from competition over Easter weekend. However, fans and bettors will not be sidelined this weekend considering both the Craftsman Truck Series and the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series will be in action at Rockingham Speedway for back to back races on Friday and Saturday. To kick off the racing weekend, our focus shifts to Friday’s running of the Black’s Tire 200 which will officially be the 5th race of the season for the Craftsman Truck Series!

After opening the season with a victory at Daytona, Chandler Smith has held the points lead through all 4 races this season and currently owns a modest 33 point lead in the standings. However, the first 4 races were composed of two superspeedways, a road course, and the most recent outing at Phoenix a few weeks ago. Needless to say, the first few races have been mostly outliers with superspeedways and road course style racing. The good news for the Truck Series is that a lot of the traditional ovals are next up on the calendar starting with this weekend’s stop at Rockingham.

Personally, I believe the next 2-3 races will be extremely important towards revealing the teams/drivers that are going to consistently compete for wins throughout the remainder of the season. There are a lot of highly talented full-time drivers in this year’s Truck Series field and a lot of capable contenders. Over the next few weeks, I believe we will have a better understanding of which drivers/teams have the “speed” to consistently put them at the front of the field. For Friday’s Black’s Tire 200, the Truck Series has only competed at Rockingham just 3 times in history and just once (last year) in the last decade. In last year’s race, Tyler Ankrum scored one of the bigger upsets of the entire year. Needless to say, we don’t have a lot of historical track data to rely on from a handicapping perspective.

Handicapping Rockingham

Since both the Craftsman Truck Series and the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series will be in similar situations this weekend with limited historical information, let’s discuss what handicappers and/or bettors should consider about racing at Rockingham. As many are aware, Rockingham was among the early pioneer tracks in NASCAR. At just less than 1-mile in length, this D-shaped oval has produced terrific short-track racing throughout the years. The track fell off of NASCAR’s schedule following the 2004 season due to declining attendance and decisions by NASCAR to move more events to the larger television markets. Only in recent years, Rockingham was repaved and restored in many ways to bring racing back to one of its oldest venues.

With the repave, I would consider Rockingham to compare closely to North Wilkesboro which is another North Carolina track with a very similar history. The current version of Rockingham does not produce the severe tire wear that we witnessed in the 90s and 2000s but it is still a tricky short track that is very fast for its size. In terms of handicapping, we can look at tracks like North Wilkesboro, Iowa, and perhaps even Richmond to evaluate performance trends because those tracks have a lot of similar characteristics. Once we identify the drivers that are strong at these types of short tracks, we must also evaluate if they are in suitable equipment to potentially make a run at a checkered flag!

Betting Targets

Practice and qualifying will not take place until Saturday in just a few hours prior to the green flag. Therefore, we must lock-in most of our bets before on-track activities begin. With that being said, most of my betting targets are going to be centered around H2H targets. We saw last year that nailing the setup at Rockingham is very important. In fact, we saw both Tyler Ankrum and Jesse Love (later disqualified) emerge as surprise winners in both series after nailing setups that seemed to simply outclass the field. The possibility of surprise winners is definitely in-play again this week; I’m just not sure if we will know who those potential drivers are until they roll onto the track for practice/qualifying on Friday. If we do identify additional targets, I will add an update to this preview.

For now, I am focusing primarily on drivers that I believe are grossly overvalued or undervalued to exploit in H2H match-ups. The first driver that I believe is overvalued may not be a popular choice but I feel like Corey Heim should not be the overall favorite on Friday. I understand that Heim may be the most talented driver, outside of Carson Hocevar, in the field and is fresh off yet another win at Darlington. However in that race at Darlington, Heim struggled more than people realize compared to his dominant 2025 season where he led nearly every lap. The reason is simple because this is not the same team that Heim drove for last season. In fact, the #1 team does not have a full-time driver and has a different driver nearly every week. I have not exactly been impressed with the speed from that team and let’s not forget that Heim struggled at Rockingham last year. Therefore when we combine both of those factors, I feel like Heim may somewhat disappoint this weekend based on his current odds.

While I believe that both Layne Riggs and Carson Hocevar should be a factor in this race, both drivers are receiving relatively low odds. The drivers that I believe produce the better ROI and may be even sharper H2H targets include the likes of point leader Chandler Smith and Kaden Honeycutt. Both Smith and Honeycutt ran extremely well at Rockingham last year. In fact, both drivers produced 100+ average driver ratings in the 2025 Black’s Tire 200. Last year, Honeycutt was running for Niece Motorsports whom has struggled in terms of performance and is now with arguably the best team (#11) in the garage. For that reason, I believe Honeycutt is a legitimate dark horse for the win and an ideal target in H2H formats. While I could advocate a similar upside for Smith, I am targeting him specifically in H2H formats because I simply believe he will outperform all of the drivers in his range of betting odds. For deeper options that may yield prop bet or fantasy value, Jake Garcia, Giovanni Ruggiero, and Daniel Hemric are all among the drivers that also appeared to be undervalued based on current betting odds.