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For the third straight week, we visit a track for only its second race. While Atlanta Motor Speedway has been on the Cup schedule since 1960, this is not the same track.
Atlanta has struggled to find an identity as a true oval, a similarly-configured, 1.5-mile tri-oval, (when it was remade into the image of the other “cookie-cutter” courses), and now the flavor of the day is pack racing – as if four lotteries at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway were not enough.
That makes the data thin but in reality, a thicker book would not help much because there is very little truly predictive of success in pack racing. Fans like the action, or at least that’s what NASCAR reports, but then again, who doesn’t like a good demolition derby from time to time. One of the attractions for this style of racing is that nearly every driver gets to spend time with the leaders under green flag conditions. Each of those drivers have a dedicated group of fans.
In the last six seasons, at least one driver has earned a career-first win at Daytona and Talladega. Fifteen of 23 wins in that span were the driver’s fourth or fewer trophies, including William Byron’s third-career win at Atlanta earlier this year.
The racing in this spring’s QuikTrip 500 certainly makes it seem as if this egalitarian nature will carry over with the new pavement and configuration. We already have five new winners this season and with the NextGen car, it is not out of the question we will get another.
Predicting there might be another newbie is a heck of a lot easier than predicting who that might be.
This week’s dark horse list may look a little interesting because many of the drivers, such Corey LaJoie, Austin Dillon, Brad Keselowski, and Michael McDowell that are often profiled here have already been covered in the Best Bets column. That is because their average finishes over the past two season are better than the usual favorite.
Denny Hamlin (+1200) did not make the best bets cut because he got such a terrible start to his season. He suffered through a three-race streak of finishes outside the top 15. He is equally capable of scoring top-fives, however, which he did in six consecutive plate races from 2019 through 2021. The PointsBet Sportsbook traders obviously believe he has the potential to win, because he has the second-lowest betting line of 12/1.
Simply by virtue of his QuikTrip 500 win, Byron (+1200) deserves attention this week. The trouble with him is he is erratic on this track type, largely because he is also star-crossed and gets involved in a lot of accidents. Since the beginning of 2019, he’s won twice and finished in the top-five six times, but he’s also been outside the top 20 on eight occasions.
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We made Keselowski one of our best bets, but stopped short of including Chris Buescher (+4000). The driver of the No. 17 lacks the experience of his teammate, but he showed an ability to run with the leaders in Daytona this spring in the debut of the newly christened RFK Racing. In 2020, he scored top-10s in three of four plate races and then hit a lull. Two of his last four efforts have ended that well, however, including a seventh at Atlanta this spring.
Along with his teammate Hamlin, Kyle Busch (+1200) was also left out of the best bets – not because he is not capable of running well on carburetor-restricted speedways, but because he has not had particularly good luck on this course type throughout his career – and because he’s hit a lull of three straight races outside the top 20. Momentum is one of the factors that is just as impactful on plate track as unrestricted courses.
Alex Bowman (+2500) has the car to contend and, along with his three teammates, he has ready-made drafting partners, but he is just as crash prone as several drivers already mentioned. Three of his four attempts from 2021 ended in hardship and results in the mid- to high-30s; his other was a seventh. This year, he finished 24th in the Daytona 500, but since then he has a 10th at Atlanta and ninth at Talladega. This could the start of a streak on this course type.
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Dark Horses for the 2022 QuikTrip 500 [Atlanta 1]
Geico 500 [Talladega 1]
Daytona 500 [Daytona 1]
