On Sunday the NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 begins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Cup Series drivers will run 267 laps on the 1.5-mile tri-oval just outside of Las Vegas. This will be the Cup Series second trip to Las Vegas in 2024. In March Kyle Larson cruised to a dominate victory here. Larson won both stages and led 181 laps. He finished nearly half a second ahead of second place driver Tyler Reddick. Reddick had a great long run car and was closing in the waning laps. However, he simply didn’t have enough time to catch Larson.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway is one of four intermediate 1.5-mile “cookie cutter” tracks on the Cup Schedule. In the late 2000s and through the late 2010s these tracks were the primary track type the Cup Series ran. In 2011, the Cup Series ran 10 races at this track type at seven different venues. Today however we are down to six races at four tracks.
Las Vegas is a tri-oval that is most similar to Kansas Speedway another 1.5-mile tri-oval. The turns at Las Vegas are banked at 20 degrees, while the turns at Kansas are progressively banked from 17-20 degrees. The front and back straightaways at Las Vegas are banked at 9 degrees, while the straightaways at Kansas are banked at 10 and five degrees respectively. Tire wear at the tracks is also similar. In the past several years both tracks have moved into the medium-high wear category.
Las Vegas also shows strong correlation with Darlington Raceway, a 1.33-mile intermediate track, Homestead-Miami, a 1.5-mile true oval, and Charlotte Motor Speedway, another 1.5-mile track (that is a quad-oval). So when handicapping Las Vegas I fold these tracks into the mix. Texas Motor Speedway is the fourth 1.5-mile “cookie cutter” track, however I’m not using it as a direct comparable for Las Vegas. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the lower tire wear at that track means that strategy can be quite different. In addition, the reconfiguration of turns 1 and 2 at Texas has resulted in that track having significantly more cautions per lap.
So with this background in mind here there is one driver I want to get some action on now.
Ty Gibbs has been fantastic at intermediate tracks in 2024. In the six races at Las Vegas (1), Kansas (2), Darlington (2), and Charlotte (1) he has four Top 10 finishes. That includes at fifth place finish at Las Vegas in the spring. He also recorded another fifth place finish at Kanas last month.
Over those six races Gibbs is the leader in Top 10 laps, both in raw number of laps and percentage of laps completed run inside the Top 10. Gibbs is also the leader in average running position over those races. His average running position of 6.49 is over a full position better than his teammate Denny Hamlin who has the second best average running position in the Cup Series.
The Speed Geeks Sim Center is showing significant value on Ty Gibbs to win at +2400 which is available at Fan Duel. However, with Ty out of the playoffs I want to shift down to some other markets to build in room for error or the playoff drivers just having an extra little oomph. By moving down to the Top 5 and Top 10 markets I get that cushion while still getting significant value.
The Sim Center has fair value for Ty’s Top 10 odds at -106 and Top 5 at +222. So I’m doing a mini ladder on these bets. I’ve put one unit on Gibbs to finish Top 10 at +120. I also have half a unit on him to finish Top 5 at +330. I want to keep some edge/room for the sim to be wrong on these bets. So I wouldn’t take them all the way down to the Sim’s fair market value. However I would bet the Top 10 odds down to +110 and the Top 5 down to +275.
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