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NASCAR is making its second stop of 2024 at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend. This is the first week of the Cup Series playoffs. The Xfinity Series has another three weeks in its regular season though. I’ve spent a lot of time this week digging through the odds and have come up empty for the Cup Series. The Xfinity Series though is presenting some value.
Atlanta is a mini-superspeedway. The track is 1.540-mile quad oval with 28 degree banking in the turns. Although it is around a mile shorter than the tracks at Daytona and Talladega, the track races more like those tracks than any other track on NASCAR’s circuit. The name of the game at these tracks is pack drafting. However, there are some differences between Atlanta and the traditional superspeedways. At Daytona and Talladega speed maters only in as much as you need to be able to keep pace with the draft. At Atlanta though some raw speed and handling comes into play a bit more. So more so then when I look at Daytona or Talladega, I’m paying attention to what a driver has done at Atlanta.
In addition, to Atlanta, Talladega, and Daytona the Xfinity Series uses the superspeedway engine package at Pocono, Indianapolis, and Michigan. Those tracks don’t draft the way Atlanta does with pack drafting. However, we can draw on those some to help project which cars may have some speed, which as already noted isn’t as irrelevant at Atlanta as it is at Daytona and Talladega.
Back in February I had a bet on Riley Herbst to finish Top 5 here at Atlanta. The odds at that time were +170. Unfortunately the bet didn’t cash. After running inside the Top 5 for 93% of the race and Top 3 for over 80% of his laps, he ran out of fuel late. In April at Talladega Herbst ran 35 of his laps inside the Top 5, and 20% inside the Top 3. He managed to hold on in that race and find his way to a second place finish. Just two weeks ago at Daytona he ran 35% of his laps inside the Top 5 and 19% of his laps inside the Top 3 on his way to a fourth place finish.
At Indianapolis Herbst ran inside the Top 3 for 74% of the race on his way to the win. A week later at Michigan he ran inside the Top 3 for 64% of the race and finished fifth. Given these performances over the 2024 season I was shocked to see that the odds on Herbst to finish Top 3 and Top 5 are longer this week than they were in February.
At Bet 365 Herbst is +260 to finish inside the Top 5. Those odds translate to an implied probability of just 27.78%. Herbst has run at least 35% of his laps inside the Top 5 at every drafting track in 2024. He has also finished inside the Top 5 in two of four drafting races. At the season opener at Daytona he finished sixth. As already mentioned he was on pace to finish inside the Top 3 at Atlanta this spring. So I don’t see any reason to think his odds of finishing Top 5 are that low.
Herbst’s Top 3 odds at Bet 365 are currently sitting at +550. That translates to an implied probability of 15.38%. As with his Top 5 odds, given how strong Herbst has been in this package in 2024 I think those odds are out of line with how he will perform on Saturday.
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