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For the second consecutive week, NASCAR heads to a track for the second time in the Modern Era. Last year was one of major changes to the schedule with Nashville Superspeedway and Road America among several news tracks and track configurations. In both instances, we have other data to help inform our decision. Nashville is showing remarkable similarity to other rough-surfaced tracks. Road America is one of six road courses on which the series runs in 2022.
It’s never quite that simple, however. Drivers who dominated road courses last year have not been nearly as strong in 2022. Both the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) and Sonoma Raceway featured first time winners. Just four drivers swept the top 10 on the road courses this year and only two have at least three consecutive finishes that strong – and they are not racers we typically think of as dominant on this track type.
As NASCAR finalizes the schedule for 2023, rumors abound that Road America could be replaced next year ty a street circuit in Chicago, so this could be the last time in a while for drivers to add their name to the record book along with last year’s winner Elliott or the 1956 winner Tim Flock. If that doesn’t raise the sense of urgency, there are still four playoff spots up for grabs with nine races remaining in the regular season, so the Kwik Trip 250 by Jockey will be a wide-open affair.
Proposed Winner
It’s difficult to overlook Elliott (+500) on road courses because he has been uniformly successful and stands head and shoulders above the competition. He has won more frequently than any of them in recent years, but he has also lost more races than he’s won.
Since winning his second race of the season last year at Road America, Elliott finished in the top five three times and eighth once in five road course races. He’s not infallible, but most of the recent events on this track type have an asterisk. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race was marred by high attrition and a poor decision to install metal barriers along the side of the racing surface, Elliott was intentionally wrecked at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course by Kevin Harvick, and the No. 9 suffered one of many mishaps with a wheel lug at Sonoma.
At COTA, Elliott was simply beat by the competition. But then one looks back at the seven road course wins he’s accumulated since 2019 and notes that the vast majority are still top-fives despite the unpredictability of this track type – and it’s almost impossible not to regard him as the best road course racer in the field.
Then again, the best driver doesn’t always win.
Best Bets for a top five
On road courses, the No. 2 position has largely been reserved for Elliott’s teammate in the No. 5 car recently, but he is in the process of being replaced by Ross Chastain (+850). His win at COTA this spring was not entirely a surprise. He ran well there in 2021 in the rain-plagued race and finished fourth, then scored top-10s in the next two road course races. He entered the race with three consecutive top-fives and was establishing his name. Chastain has only gotten better and with a seventh at Sonoma, he is one of the four drivers with back-to-back top-10s on this track type.
Kyle Larson (+625) won more road races last year than Elliott at three to two. In two of those events, he held off Elliott in head-to-head competition, so he has a legitimate claim as Elliott’s equal on this track type. Unfortunately, he’s had too much trouble in the first two road races this year –finishing outside the top 15 in both – to put him in a great frame of mind for Sunday’s race. Last year, he finished 16th in this race after getting spun by his teammate in the No. 48. There is no reason to believe he won’t challenge for a top five, however, and reset his stats.
Ryan Blaney (+1400) is not the first driver who comes to mind on road courses each week, but it doesn’t take too ling to remember how consistent he’s been. Blaney is one of only two drivers in the field with a top-10 streak that stretches into last year and he’s finished that well in four consecutive races dating back to a runner-up result on the Indy road course. He won the inaugural race on the Charlotte Roval after Jimmie Johnson wrecked Martin Truex Jr. Blaney is the kind of driver who just seems to pop up at the end of these road course races.
Truex (+1200) is batting .500 on road courses since last year’s Sonoma race. He left there and finished ninth at Road America, then finished third at Watkins Glen International. In the last four races, he’s added only one more top-10 and that is not what we’ve grown to expect from a driver with four road course wins. All of those came at either Sonoma or the Glen, however, as did all but one of his 13 top-fives. Truex may need time to learn this road course, but he is also coming off an extremely strong run in Nashville before the wrong strategy denied him a good finish. He’s going to be hungry.
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Best Bets for a top 10
Austin Cindric (+1600) already has a win on the season, but he is not entirely safely in playoff contention. With nine races remaining and 12 winners so far, the possibility for 17 winners cannot be discounted and four drivers are within nine points of having the fewest among those with victories. Cindric is one of them. His prowess on road courses in the Xfinity was such that Team Penske used three of his pre-rookie warmups on this track type and he was strong each time he raced. He only got one top-10, but that was in his last attempt of the season and with a pair of those results this year, he has a three-race top-10 streak going.
Christopher Bell (+1600) is currently two positions and 37 points above the bubble. There are several drivers below him in the championship standings who could win one of the next nine races and if that happens, his grasp on the playoffs is tenuous. All that changes with a win. He would go from being the 15th seed to about eighth. That is foremost in his and the team’s mind every time they hit the track. Bell surprised the field with his Daytona International Speedway road course win last year and he’s been in the top five twice and the top 10 four times since.
Six of Tyler Reddick’s (+2500) last eight races on road courses ended in top-10 finishes. Two of the last three were top-fives. NASCAR has a way of developing themes and with two of the four first time winners getting their victories on road courses, it’s not out of the question that another won’t happen. Reddick finished second in last year’s Charlotte Roval race; he was fifth this spring at COTA. He ran into trouble in Sonoma, so this will be the chance to see how he rebounds.
In the opening, we said that several drivers with great records last year did not carry them over to 2022. Denny Hamlin (+1400) is one of them. In seven races on this track type last year, he scored four top-fives, an eighth, and a 14th. He was out of contention only once. In 2022, he’s failed to crack the top 15 in two races, but the JGR contingent is slowly getting the feel for the NextGen car. We don’t think he will automatically contend for a top five, but a top-10 is possible.
Likewise, Kyle Busch (+1100) had a strong record last year that has not carried over to 2022. His record is almost identical to Hamlin’s with four top-fives and a 10th. He had two results outside the top 15 in 2021 and has not cracked the top 25 this year, but it’s hard to keep Busch down for long periods of time on any track type. His best run on a road course last year came in this race when he was third behind Elliott and Bell.
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