This weekend the NASCAR Cup Series will race on Saturday under the lights in Richmond Virginia. Richmond is a 3/4-mile long D-shaped oval track. Richmond’s turns feature 14 degrees of banking. The frontstretch of the track has eight degrees of banking and the backstretch is banked at two degrees.
The length and banking at Richmond are most similar to Phoenix and Iowa. However, despite these similarities, speeds at Richmond tend to be significantly slower than at those two tracks. The reason for the slower speed is extreme tire wear. The tire wear at Richmond is among the most significant of any track NASCAR visits. As such a driver’s ability to manage tires and a team’s pit crew play a significant role in races at the track.
Tire wear will likely play an even bigger role this weekend than in past years. Goodyear is bringing the softest tires that have ever been run at the track this weekend. According to the Goodyear tire notes “the right-side tire is the same used as the “option” tire at Richmond last year. The left-side tire is slightly softer than last year.” This means that drivers should fire off quick on new tires, but that speed should rapidly fall off. This will hopefully create more opportunities for passing and a more exciting race.
Joey Logano has more Top 5 finishes at Richmond than any other track. In 31 starts he has 14 Top 5 finishes (45%). Just counting his starts with Team Penske he has finished Top 5 at Richmond in 56.5% of races (13 of 23). In the Gen 7 car he has finished in the Top 5 in two of the six races here. However, last summer he was on his way to a Top 5 finish when Austin Dillon intentionally wrecked Logano. In the six races he has run over 70% of his laps in the Top 5 on three occasions, including both races here last year.
Logano has also shown the ability to manage softer tires over the past two years. Last year in the All Star race at North Wilkesboro Logano led 199 of 200 laps. He used the softer option tire the entire race. In that event he managed his tires to hold off drivers using the more durable “prime” tire, which in theory should have allowed other drivers to have an advantage over Logano later in the race. Earlier this year at Phoenix Logano also managed his tires well. At Phoenix he had the second best True Performance Rating. He also had the third best incident adjusted speed. However, late race chaos relegated him to a disappointing 13th place finish .
Logano is having a disappointing year. He has just two Top 5 finishes through 24 races. This means he is on pace to have the fewest Top 5 finishes since he joined Team Penseke in 2013. However, he has still shown good pace at the tracks where he has historically been his best. As already noted, he had a Top 3 car at Phoenix, where he has always excelled. Logano also won at Texas where he has the second most Top 5 finishes in his career.
At Win The Race we run 20,000 simulations of the race using our proprietary performance scores. Our simulations have Logano finishing in the Top 5 just under 46% of the time. This translates to fair odds of +119. The implied odds of +180 are just 35.71%, meaning even if our projections are high on Logano, there is a lot of room for us to be wrong and still have value on Logano finishing in the Top 5. I would bet this down to +150. While we do show value on Logano in other markets as well, I want to bet on the more forgiving Top 5 market, at still significantly plus money odds, rather than on his Top 3 or outright odds.
