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Last week’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway was the second in what will now be six lottery-style carburetor-restricted superspeedway races and as those events always do, it defied attempts at prediction.
This week, the focus shifts entirely as NASCAR heads to the first road course race of the season on the Circuit of the Americas – which is typically one of the easier track types to handicap. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a few surprises popping up, though. In the past four seasons, 18 active drivers have earned top-fives with another eight landing in the top 10. In that span of 15 races, 10 drivers have posted top-10s in more than half their starts with Chase Elliott (12) and Martin Truex Jr. (10) in double digits. With nine top-10s each, Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch come close.
Victory Lane was dominated by Kyle Larson (3) and Chase Elliott (2) last year. Christopher Bell won on the Daytona International Speedway road course and AJ Allmendinger won on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race and both had multiple top-10s.
In fact, when a driver found the top 10, he often managed to stay there in 2021.
With five top-10s in seven races, Elliott, Larson, Denny Hamlin, and Kyle Busch top the chart. Kurt Busch, Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, and Tyler Reddick had four top-10s each with Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, Ross Chastain, and AJ Allmendinger at three. Allmendinger deserves an asterisk because his three top-10s were earned in five races.
Kevin Harvick and Michael McDowell have two apiece.
That leaves six drivers with one top-10. They are William Byron, Brad Keselowski, Austin Cindric (in three starts), Erik Jones, Chris Buescher, and Justin Haley. Parity has been achieved, but in a way that can get plugged into a handicapping formula.
Proposed Winner
It’s not imaginative and with 3/1 odds, you are not going to make a lot on Elliott (+300), but he is a favorite to win at PointsBet Sportsbook for a reason and we happen to agree.
With seven road course wins he sits third on the all-time list and could tie Tony Stewart this week. Jeff Gordon‘s record of nine is also easily in reach before the end of the season since there are seven road course races this year and Elliott once had a four-race winning streak in 2019 and 2020.
Elliott’s only bobbles last year came at Daytona when he got off-sequence on a late-race pit stop and then spun himself off the nose of Keselowski. In all likelihood, he would have finished in the top 10 on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course if he had not been intentionally spun by Harvick midway through the event.
Still, he’s not infallible. Elliott’s win at COTA would not have happened if the race had gone the distance because he was once again off-strategy.
Best Bets for a top five
We would have been tempted this week to make Larson (+400) the favorite if not for a couple of setbacks in the first five races of 2022. The extra 100 points would be nice for a driver who statistically has an equal opportunity to win as Elliott. In fact, Larson won three road course races last year, (to Elliott’s two), and the only two times Larson failed to finish in the top five also had asterisks. With three 30-something finishes in the first five races of 2022, Larson might play a little more conservatively this week and that could make the difference between first and second.
Hamlin (+1600) may well be the best value in the field. With odds four times as great as Larson, he can find Victory Lane and would add to the number of 2022 winners with odds greater than 14/1. Hamlin has not been the first driver under the checkers on a twisty track since 2016 at Watkins Glen International, but he is riding a current 25-race streak of finishing on the lead lap on this track type and has top-fives in just under half his starts since 2018.
Kurt Busch (+4000) is one of the best road course racers in the field. In the last 15 races dating back to the start of 2018, he has failed to crack the top 15 only three times and nine of those were top-10s. His best result of fourth came twice last year, including on the tricky Road America track. Like Hamlin, he’s riding a 25-race streak of lead lap finishes and in order to finish first, a driver has to first finish – as the adage goes. That almost ended at COTA last year when he wheel-hopped between a pair of drivers in the rain. It also helps that at 40/1, he has no respect whatsoever from the traders and thus represents a great payday.
If not Kurt, pay close attention to his brother Kyle (+1100). The driver of the No. 18 is easily frustrated, but he can put that behind him quickly and after drawing a low number in last week pack-racing lottery, he has a chip on his shoulder. That often means fewer tenths of a second to his lap times. Busch has the record to recommend him as well with top-fives in four of his last five road course attempts.
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Best Bets for a top 10
Truex (+1000) has had a ragged season and so far missed the top five. Two of his last three starts this year ended in eighth and his first two were a pair of 13ths, so even though two of those were pack races that don’t really predict anything, he has some emotional momentum on his side and currently sits eighth in the points. Without a win, he is ranked 11th in a highly competitive field. The downside is that his historic road course record is so good that his odds are only 10/1 and should rightfully be higher.
Blaney (+1800) is another driver who fares better when one looks at the long run. With his Charlotte Roval win in the inaugural race of 2018 and two other top-threes since the beginning of that season, he is high on the chart below. In the past 15 races, he’s been outside the top 15 just four times and that means he is usually in contention after the final pit stop has been made. Like Larson, we might handicap him as a potential winner if not for the fact that the beginning of his 2022 season has been rocky.
If you don’t think it’s possible for a road ringer to win, we direct your attention to last year’s Verizon 200 at Indy. AJ Allmendinger (+1800) did an excellent job of avoiding the turtle bites that decimated the field. (For those of you who did not watch last year’s race, turtles are the steel curves the series uses to keep drivers in the field of play.) Allmendinger kept his car on course and was in position to capitalize when Briscoe spun Hamlin in the closing laps. That was not the only time he was in position to move up on others’ errors. Last year he might have had the winning strategy if the EchoPark Grand Prix at COTA had not been shortened by rain.
With a formula akin to the one used to set the Power Rankings, Bowman (+3000) stands outside the top 10 on road courses, but we are willing to elevate him on the strength of this team and because his win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway gives him some liberty where strategy is concerned. Still, it seems unlikely that he will contend for much more than a top-10 since he has only two top-fives in the past four seasons. None of those came last year, but four of his 2022 results landed between eighth and 10th.
For Logano (+2200) to help us with our prediction this week, he is going to need to roll off the truck strong. If he struggles in practice, move on to the dark horse post and find your next pick among Briscoe, Chastain, or Reddick. But if he does get a good start to the weekend, he could match last year’s early record on road courses when he finished second (Daytona), third (COTA), and fourth (Sonoma) in his first three starts. Logano did not visit the top five again, but he scored a seventh in the final race on the Charlotte Roval last fall.
Road Course finishes – 2018+ Through Charlotte Roval (2021) | ||||||
Driver | Wins | Top-3s | Top-5s | Top-10s | Top-15s | Starts |
7 | 9 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 15 | |
3 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 10 | 13 | |
Martin Truex, Jr. | 2 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 13 | 15 |
1 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 15 | |
1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 9 | |
1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 8 | |
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| 3 | 7 | 9 | 13 | 15 | |
| 3 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 15 | |
| 3 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 15 | |
| 2 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 15 | |
| 1 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 15 | |
| 1 | 2 | 8 | 12 | 15 | |
| 1 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 15 | |
| 1 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 9 | |
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| 4 | 9 | 12 | 15 | |
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| 2 | 3 | 7 | 15 | |
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| 1 | 3 | 4 | 12 | |
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| 1 | 1 | 4 | 15 | |
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| 5 | 7 | 15 | |
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| 3 | 4 | 15 | |
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| 3 | 3 | 7 | |
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| 2 | 5 | 15 | |
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| 1 | 2 | 9 | |
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| 1 | 1 | 7 | |
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| 1 | 1 | 3 | |
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| 1 | 1 | 1 | |
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| 5 | 14 | |
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. |
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| 3 | 15 |
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| 3 | 15 | |
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| 1 | 11 | |
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| 12 | |
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| 11 | |
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| 9 | |
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| 1 | |
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| 1 | |
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| 0 | |
Loris Hezeman |
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| 0 |
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| 0 | |
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| 0 | |
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Driver | Wins | Top-3s | Top-5s | Top-10s | Top-15s | Starts |
| 2 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | |
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| 2 | 5 | 9 | 15 | |
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| 1 | 3 | 6 | 8 | |
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| 2 | 3 | 15 | |
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| 1 | 3 | 12 | |
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| 1 | 4 | |
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| 9 | |
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| 8 | |
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| 8 | |
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| 7 | |
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| 7 | |
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| 3 | |
JH Nemechek |
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| 2 |
RC Enerson |
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| 1 |
Ryan Eversley |
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| 1 |
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