This weekend Major League Baseball has taken over Bristol Motor Speedway for the Speedway classic. In a bit of “fair is fair,” NASCAR is heading to the home state of the Field of Dreams, Iowa. After finding last week’s best bet in the Truck Series, this week I am turning to the Xfinity Series.
Iowa is a .875-mile D shaped oval. The turns are progressively banked from 12-14 degrees. The frontstretch is banked at 10 degrees and the backstretch is banked at four degrees. Last year the track was partially repaved in the turns.
The closest track to Iowa in terms of size, banking, and speed of races, is Phoenix Raceway. Phoenix is a one-mile long dog-leg oval with banking of nine and 11 degrees in the turns. Speeds at Phoenix and Iowa both top out in the low to mid-130 mile per hour range.
Secondary comparable tracks are Richmond, which is just slightly shorter at 0.75-miles long and has nearly identical banking. However, given the significant tire wear at Richmond speeds there are significantly slower. In the Truck Series Indianapolis Raceway Park and the Milwaukee Mile have similar lengths and banking. Finally, in terms of general short flat tracks there is some correlation with Iowa and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Taylor Gray has never raced at Iowa. However he has been a rock star at short flat tracks in his short career. He is also in top tier Joe Gibbs Racing equipment.
Last year in his Xfinity Series debut he raced from the back of the field to a third place finish at Richmond. Earlier this year at Phoenix he qualified ninth and finished sixth. Gray has four Truck Series starts at the tracks I’m using to handicap this race. In this starts Gray has three Top 10, two Top 5, and a Top 3 finish.
This year the 54 JGR car is a re-number of the 81 JGR car from 2024. At Iowa Chandler Smith piloted the 81 to an eighth place finish. Smith won at Phoenix in the spring as well as Richmond. He also finished fifth at Phoenix in the fall, despite not being in the Championship 4 group.
The combined history of Taylor Gray and his 54 team mean I’m very high on Gray this week. Our simulations at Win The Race are high on Gray for all of these seasons. We do show value on Gray to win but give the stacked field, I want to drop down to his Top 3 and Top 5 odds. SIM FMV has Gray finishing Top 5 in 43.97% of the simulations and Top 3 31.11% of the time. Both of these numbers are well clear of the implied odds of +190 and +360 which are available at Bet365.
