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This is about the same time last year repeat winners forestalled the conversation about whether there would be more than 16 unique winners in the regular season. Round 15 of 2021 was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway with Kyle Larson posting the first of three consecutive wins after those opening rounds filled 11 playoff slots. One of Larson’s wins came at Sonoma Raceway.
After Larson’s threepeat, the next three races were also claimed by drivers who had already won in 2021. Only two additional winners in playoff contention would be added before the season was complete. We will have to wait and see what 2022 holds. Several winless drivers each week continue to be handicapped with decent odds of adding their name to the list and at the very least, the specter of a potential 17th winner keeps the drivers honest.
Because there are winners outside the top 16 in points, Tyler Reddick finds himself on the bubble, followed in order by Aric Almirola, Christopher Bell, Martin Truex Jr., and Ryan Blaney. Three of these drivers have road course wins under their belt; four are handicapped as potential top-10 finishers for the Save Mart 350k. There will be a lot of different strategies playing out this week, and it’s likely that no one will have a clear idea of who is going to win until the final pit stop is in the books.
Proposed Winner
Chase Elliott (+600) has lost more road course races in the past five seasons than he’s won, but not by a lot. In the last 16 races, he has seven wins to his credit on this track type, including four consecutively in 2019 / 2020. He would probably have stretched that to six if not for an unforced error when he turned across the nose of Brad Keselowski’s car on the Daytona International Speedway in 2021.
After finishing 21st in that race, he finished first or second in the next four road course events and would have kept that streak alive if he had not been intentionally wrecked by Kevin Harvick last fall on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course in retaliation for an incident earlier at Bristol Motor Speedway. He finished fourth this spring at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA).
Even with a record like this, winning is tricky. A driver can lose track position at the wrong time or simply get overwhelmed if he makes the wrong decision about a long- or short-run setup, but handicapping is about the numbers and no one comes close to matching Elliott’s road course record.
Best Bets for a top five
Kyle Busch (+1000) has a special affinity for Sonoma. He currently has the longest streak going at that track with six consecutive results of seventh or better. This streak was kicked off with a win in 2015; he has another in 2008, but between those two victories, he proved to be fallible with five of six attempts ending outside the top 15.
Busch’s teammate Denny Hamlin (+1400) has the second-longest streak of top-10s at Sonoma. He finished second in the 2016 edition of this race and has been strong in the four events that followed. Like Busch, Hamlin is not bulletproof on this course type. Last year, he finished outside the top 10 twice in seven races. This spring, he was 18th in the EchoPark Grand Prix at COTA, but he has something to prove after getting wrecked by Ross Chastain at World Wide Technology Raceway.
For that matter, Chastain (+1100) also has something to prove. After wrecking both Hamlin and Elliott in separate incidents on the flat 1.25-miler, he told NBC’s Dustin Long: “I just drove over my head so many times. It’s one thing to do it once, but I just kept driving into guys.” Self-reflection aside, Chastain is paid to be aggressive and after the race, car owner Justin Marks supported his temperament. Payback is coming, but it probably won’t happen this week and Chastain is the most recent road course winner – a victory he took after knocking the leader out of the way in Austin.
Bell (+1500) is three drivers above the bubble with a 57-point advantage over Harvick, but he is fully aware that is a moving target and if any of the drivers below him wins, that number shrinks as the slots continue to fill for the playoffs. Bell caught the field by surprise last spring when he won the impromptu Daytona road course race. He finished second at Road America last year and was third at COTA this spring. In total, he has four top-10s in his last five road course starts and should help Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in their attempt to dominate the weekend.
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Best Bets for a top 10
When Larson (+700) was in championship form, he could win on every track type. He won this race last year after holding off the best current road racer: his teammate Elliott. He won three times on this track type to Elliott’s two, and no one should underestimate his skill. But this is not 2021 and Larson has not shown the same kind of strength that he did last year. Larson has five top-three finishes since the start of last season; he’s also finished outside the top 15 three times.
It’s difficult to argue convincingly against Truex (+900) given how strong he has historically been on road courses, but we’re not sure that he deserves to be ranked third in terms of betting lines. In his last eight road course attempts, he has only two top-fives and an average of 14.1. What will give him and his fans hope is that his two strongest runs were a pair of third-place finishes on the courses NASCAR has visited most often, Sonoma and Watkins Glen International.
We could save Reddick (+1800) for the dark horse post, but his road course record is easily strong enough to make him a favorite to finish in the top 10 – because that is precisely what he has done in five of his last seven races. He finished ninth at COTA last year in the rain, was eighth at Road America, and 10th at the Glen. Last fall, he nearly got his first Cup win by finishing second at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course. He finished fifth this spring at COTA. On another sportsbook, he has 2/1 odds for finishing in the top five, and that sounds like a solid bet.
Blaney (+1500) is another driver who would like to remove the speculation about his inclusion in the playoffs. He sits highest in the points among the winless drivers. He and Truex are not likely to be displaced unless there are at least 15 winners, but they need to keep an eye on one another with only nine points separating them. Blaney is not the first driver who comes to mind on this track type even though he has a win in the inaugural Charlotte Roval race. His last three road course races ended in top-10s, including a second in last year’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race.
Kurt Busch (+2000) is an underappreciated driver on road courses. His 2011 Sonoma victory was greeted with surprise because he was in underpowered equipment and coming off four consecutive results of 15th or worse. In 10 Sonoma races since then, he has swept the top 15 and finished inside the top 10 in all but two races. He hasn’t earned a top-five since finishing second to his brother in 2015, but that’s one reason we are not handicapping him for the win.
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Best Bets for the EchoPark Grand Prix [COTA]
Dark Horses for the EchoPark Grand Prix [COTA]
2021 Best Bets the Save Mart 350k [Sonoma]
