About 25 drivers have top-10s on road courses in the last five rolling years.
Three others have scored top-15s in that span of races without reaching that mark, while another nine have no top-15s. Among the drivers without top-15s, only Corey LaJoie (with 10 starts in those 15 races), Josh Bilicki (nine), Cody Ware (seven), James Davison (six), and Quin Houff (six) have made more than a handful of starts.
The bottom line is: If a driver sticks around long enough, he will eventually challenge for a top 10 on the road courses. The trick here – as it is, of course, everywhere – picking the right dark horse to ride on any given week.
[[ad:athena]]
Handicapping road courses can be tricky. As we prepare our notes each week, a Power Rankings’ formula is run from a database of more than 670,000 records that includes race finishes and strength-based stats such as Average Running Position, Driver Rating, Laps in the Top 15, and other data we deem relevant. That provides a raw number that helps start the sorting process.
One of the most telling stats this week is that five drivers in the bottom half of that sort already earned road course top-10s during this season. Another four have top-15s in 2021, but have not yet cracked the top 10. Where a bettor’s focus should lie depends on their strategy and how many units they want to contribute to favorites versus dark horses, but given the egalitarian nature of road courses, the balance should shift toward picks for top-fives and -10s with perhaps one or two more longshot wagers for the outright win.
After all, if anything happens to this week’s heavy favorite Chase Elliott (+195 for the outright win), the field is going to be wide open.
There can be some major crossover in who is and is not a strong value. Is Joey Logano a good bet for the outright win at +1500 on the PointsBet Sportsbook? Possibly, but with outright odds that high, his line for a top-three will be drug dragged to somewhere in the range of +125 to +175. His top-five odds will land around the 3/1 or 4/1 range. For a driver with four top-fives in his last five attempts, value can be found there.
Click Here for the Go Bowling at the Glen Best Bets
This post tends to look at drivers many may overlook, however. Despite strong finishes in the last three road course races and the recent announcement that he signed a multi-year contract with Trackhouse Racing, Ross Chastain still faces +5000 odds for the outright win. That drags his top-five odds to about (~) +600. Only one of his three top-10s this year has been better than seventh, and that fourth-place result came in the rain at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA), but the added confidence he brings to the track could make a difference. Equally important, his top-10 odds are also in the plus range at about +125 and it’s better to make a little than lose outright.
Likewise Tyler Reddick (~ +125 for a top-10) is in the plus range for a top-10 and he has already earned two of those in four races this year, plus a 12th last fall on the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. There may be a niggling doubt about him at Watkins Glen because his Sonoma Raceway effort was barely inside the top 20. While these two courses are dissimilar in how they race – Sonoma is technical and the Glen is flat-out fast – the commonality is that they have long been the standard bearers for the Cup series. Veterans tend to displace newbies on these tracks.
Matt DiBenedetto (~ +150 / top-10) also has a top-10 this season on the road courses. His came in the most recent event at Road America, but he has also been a good value on this track type in the past with a top-15 on the Daytona International Speedway Road Course last year and a sweep of that mark in three races in 2019. One of these was a sixth at the Glen. Intangibles make a difference in handicapping and DiBenedetto is once again racing for his career after the recent announcement he would be replaced by Harrison Burton at the Wood Brothers next year.
Michael McDowell (~ +400 / top-10) actually lands above the halfway mark in our initial sort. In terms of raw power during road course races over the past several years, he is in sight of Ryan Blaney and Alex Bowman. He scored back-to-back, top-10s on this track type at the beginning of the season and scored a 10th on the Daytona road course last year. He struggled at both Sonoma and Road America in the two most recent races and finished outside the top 25 – but that is part of the reason for his long, +12500 odds this week. If you find a dollar blowing along the sidewalk on your next walk, you may even want to risk it on the outright win.
Aric Almirola (~ +400 / top-10) has not yet cracked the top 10 on a road course in 2021, but with a 14th at Road America and a 17th at Daytona, he’s kept that mark in sight. Moreover, he’s coming off a galvanizing win at New Hampshire. That won’t be enough to challenge for the win, but it could give him the first single-digit finish on this track type since he was ninth at Sonoma in 2019.
Chase Briscoe’s +6600 for the outright win drags his top-10 odds to about +160. He finished sixth at both COTA and Road America and narrowly missed the top 15 at Sonoma with a 17th. If you are digging deeply into your pockets, that is an interesting bet that should be rated about .500.
PointsBet is our Official Sports Betting Partner, and we may receive compensation if you place a bet on PointsBet for the first time after clicking our links.
Dark Horses for the Jockey 250 (Road America)
Save Mart 350k (Sonoma)
Texas Grand Prix (COTA)
