Menu
Sunday, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Michigan International Speedway for the FireKeepers Casino 400. Michigan is a 2-mile-long D-shaped oval. The track has moderate banking. Michigan’s banking is between the flatter banking at Pocono and Indianapolis and the 1.5-mile cookie-cutter tracks. The turns are banked at 14 degrees. The backstretch is banked at 5 degrees, and the start/finish line has 12 degrees of banking.
When handicapping Michigan performance, I’m focused primarily on Indianapolis and Pocono. This is particularly true since these tracks represent two of the last three Cup Series races. However, performance at all high-speed intermediate tracks does come into play. This week, the sportsbooks continue to make finding good bets difficult. Between having a significant hold (the implied odds on the first 10 drivers were just under 100% when odds opened) and the books simply being sharper, there is not a lot of value out there.
Full disclosure: I have not made the bet below. I was able to snag some value on a bet, winning car number under 11.5, earlier this week. Unfortunately, that line had moved before I could write it up. So this is the best value on an outright that is left on the board as of right now. If I were to start my betting card right now, this is where I would go.
The NASCAR Cup Series has run seven races at high-speed intermediate tracks in 2024. Denny Hamlin is winless in those races. However, while he has not found victory lane he has consistently been among the fastest cars at those tracks. Denny has the best True Performance Rank at intermediate tracks in 2024.
Denny has been particularly strong at these longer flatter tracks over the past two years. Looking at Front Runners from Win the Race, over the five races at this track type in 2023 and 2024 Denny has the best average running position in the Cup Series. At 7.32 Denny’s average running position in these five races is more than a full position better than the next best driver, William Byron.
Denny also has the second most fastest laps over these five races.
Toyota as a whole, and Denny in particular, have also had strong performances at Michigan over the past several years. Denny has two wins at the track, though the last one was over a decade ago in 2011. Nevertheless, he has led at least one lap in each of the past eight races. Over that same time, he finished outside the Top 10 just once (11th in the first race in 2019). In those eight races, he also has finished 2nd twice and 3rd twice. Last year at Michigan, Toyota led 39% of the 200 laps. In 2022, Toyotas led 83 laps (41.5%), including a race-leading 38 by Denny.
The Speed Geeks Sim Center at Win the Race has fair odds for this bet at +523. That number has an implied probability of 16.05%. While that’s fairly aggressive, I get why the model is so high on Denny right now, and so I’m buying into the model’s hype being real. Again, I haven’t bet this myself because I have coverage on Denny in my winning car number under 11.5, but +650 is a good value if you don’t already have exposure to Denny. I want to keep a significant cushion on the implied odds, so I wouldn’t bet this under +600.
