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Best bet for the Cook Out Clash before Practice and Qualifying

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Greg Matherne

Garage Guys NASCAR Titan Greg Matherne has been making "Vegas hate him" since 2021 with data driven betting analysis. 2023 Cup Season (Through Gateway): +40.54, 2022 Full Season: +119.6 units.
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North Carolina Moonshine and Motorsports Trail

NASCAR is back baby! The official NASCAR season doesn’t start for two weeks. However, tonight we get Cup Series cars on track at Bowman Gray Stadium. The annual Cook Out Clash is tomorrow night at 8:20pm and tonight we have practice and qualifying.

Bowman Gray comparable tracks

For the past several years the Clash has been held at a temporary quarter mile track built at the LA Coliseum. This year the event moves to the east cost. The quarter-mile track at historic Bowman Gray Stadium will host the event. The NASCAR Cup Series hasn’t raced at Bowman Gray since 1971. 1971 is so long ago that only one driver in the field was even alive at that time, Rick Ware Racing ringer Tim Brown.

NASCAR doesn’t have any track quite like Bowman Gray on its regular season schedule. Martinsville Speedway is the shortest track on the schedule. But at 0.526 miles long, its over twice as long as Bowman Gray. This means that handicapping this race is not easy. At WinTheRace.info we have tried to handicap the race using a blend of performance at LA over the past several years and general short track performance (Martinsville, Richmond, Phoenix, New Hampshire, and Iowa.

Its important to remember that all of the regular season tracks are significantly longer than Bowman Gray and feature higher speeds. Even LA, which is the same length, has two major distinctions that must be considered. First, LA had a temporary track that was freshly paved each year. Bowman Gray received new pavement as part of the 2020-2022 renovations. However, the track still has several years of aging on the surface. In addition, Winston-Salem NC is significantly cooler than LA this time of year. The low in LA last year was 50 degrees on the night of the race. The high tomorrow in Winston-Salem is just 47.

Race Format

In addition to the differences in track type, this weekend’s race has a very different format that the regular season. Only 23 cars will be in the main event Sunday night. There are 39 cars trying to qualify. 20 will qualify through the heat races on Saturday. Two more cars will qualify based on the last chance qualifier on Sunday at 6:30pm. The driver who finished best in the 2024 Cup Standings and has not otherwise qualified earns the final spot.

So the only driver who is absolutely sure to be in the main event is 2024 Cup Series Champion Joey Logano. Before placing a bet on the race, review the house rules to see how the sportsbook grades a wager on a driver who fails to make the main event. I have a primer on this here that outlines the rules at some of the major books. The graphic below from NASCAR explains the format in more detail.

So as a result of the more different track type, different weather, and different format, we have a bit less confidence in our pre-practice scores than usual. Despite this, there is still a bet I want to make before we see the cars on track tonight.

Denny Hamlin Top 5 | +200 at ESPN Bet

At Win The Race we have Denny Hamlin ranked third in our pre-practice and qualifying scores. Denny won this race in 2024. The team Denny races for, Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), also won the event in 2023. In 2022 Kyle Busch, then racing for JGR led the most laps in the race and arguably had the best car despite his second place finish.

Denny is great at short tracks in general. He has won five times at Martinsville, five times at Richmond, twice at Phoenix, and three times at New Hampshire. In 144 starts at those four tracks Denny has finished inside the Top 5 46.5% of the times (67 Top 5 finishes).

Considering Denny’s success at short flat tracks and JGR’s dominance at quarter-mile tracks over the past three Clash events, I was shocked that ESPN set his Top 5 odds so long. At +200, the implied odds of Denny finishing inside the Top 5 are just 33.33%. Based on his history I expect Denny to be much closer to 45-50% likely to finish inside the Top 5. In addition, ESPN’s price is just out of line with other books. At Caesars Denny is +130 to finish Top 5. At Hard Rock he is +230 to finish Top 3 and he is +220 for a Top 3 at DraftKings.

So all things considered, I’m happy to jump on Denny Top 5 at +200. Though, since there are a lot of unknowns this weekend, I’m keeping my bets smaller this wee. I am putting just 1/2 a unit on the bet. I would be comfortable betting this down to +175.

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