The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Kansas Speedway this Sunday. Kansas is a 1.5-mile tri-oval with moderate to high tire wear. The turns have progressive banking between 17 and 20 degrees. The back stretch is banked at five degrees while the front stretch has 10 degrees of banking. Over the past three years in the Gen 7 car, Kansas has consistently produced great racing, with all six races scoring over 80% in Jeff Gluck’s good race poll.
When handicapping Kansas, all intermediate tracks with steep banking are in play. Las Vegas is the primary comparable track, as Kansas is considered a sister track to Las Vegas Motor Speedway. After Las Vegas, Darlington and Charlotte also have a significant correlation with performance at Kansas. Finally, although Texas is somewhat unique among intermediate tracks given the above-average number of cations at the track, there is useful data to be found in a driver’s performance at Texas. This is particularly true given that the races are on back-to-back weeks this year.
After a down year for Kaulig Racing in 2024, the team has bounced back strong in 2025. The result is AJ Allmendinger is having one of the best years of his career. This includes qualifying inside the Top 10 at two of the four high-speed, high-banked intermediate tracks. He also has two Top 10 finishes in those races, including an eighth at Las Vegas. Last weekend at Texas, he qualified in the Top 10 and was maintaining that position before the air gun disconnected during his first pit stop, costing him his track position. Despite restarting towards the back of the field, he was driving back to the Top 10 before he was caught up in a wreck caused by Bubba Wallace, which ended his day.
At Win The Race our SIM FMV has run 20,000 simulations of this weekends race. In those simulations Allmendinger is projected to finish inside the Top 10 31.67% of the time. That translates to fair odds of +216. That means that Bet365’s offering of +700 is the biggest value that I am able to find right now.
Allmendinger’s historical Top 10 rate in Kansas is just 20%. His overall Top 10 rate at other 1.5-mile intermediates outside of Homestead also leaves a bit to be desired. He is just 15 of 101 finishing inside the Top 10 at the old Atlanta, Charlotte, Texas, Kentucky, and Las Vegas. So it’s certainly possible that the sim is overvaluing AJ’s recent performance. That said, AJ is having a strong year, and even if the sim is giving AJ more credit than he deserves, his 14.85% Top 10 rate at these tracks is well clear of the 12.5% rate implied by the odds of +700.
I’ve put half a unit on this at +700 and would be comfortable betting it down to +500 before practice and qualifying.
