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Sunday the Cup Series heads to Charlotte Motor Speedway for the longest race of the year. Capping off a full day of motorsports, starting with the F1 Monaco GP and the Indy 500, the NASCAR Cup Series will take 400 laps around the 1.5-mile quad-oval that is Charlotte Motor Speedway. Charlotte is a fairly straightforward and predictable track, although the length of the race adds a certain amount of randomness to the event.
When projecting Charlotte the most comparable tracks are the three other 1.5-mile tri/quad-ovals, Texas, Las Vegas, and Kansas. Some consideration of the other high speed tracks over one mile is also worth taking into consideration. So while Darlington, Dover, and Auto Club are not primary comparable tracks, drivers’ performance at those races can still provide some insight into Charlotte. With that in mind lets turn to Charlotte.
The books continue to get sharper, so there isn’t a lot of value on the board. That means that until we see some on the track data I’m not making many bets.
Ross’s finishes at the five tracks where the Cup Series has run the intermediate package in 2023 are 3, 12, 2, 5, and 29. However prior to his incident with Kyle Larson at Darlington, leading to the 29th place finish, he was running in the Top 3 all day.
Chastain is the only driver to have completed all 2360 laps that the Cup Series has run at 1.5-mile tri/quad-ovals in the Gen 7 car. Over that time he has run 49.58% of those laps inside the Top 5. Reducing the sample size to just Las Vegas and Kansas this year Chastain remains strong. He completed 52% of his laps inside the Top 5 in those races (51.2% at Vegas and 52.8% at Kansas). At Auto Club he completed 92% of his laps inside the Top 5, at Dover he completed 88% of his laps in the Top 5, and at Darlington it was 87%. Simply put, Chastain has had a very fast car at every 1.5-mile tri/quad-oval in the Gen 7 car and at every track using the intermediate package this year.
I bet 1u to win 1.6u and would bet this down to +150.
Austin Dillon over Chase Briscoe was my first bet of the week when it opened at -125 at Caesars. That was quickly bet down to -165. Dillon was also bet down to -165 at MGM. That made it shocking to me that the same matchup opened at -110 at BetFred so I bet it again. It has since been bet down to -140 there. Dillon then opened at -125 over Briscoe at the Kambi books (Barstool, BetRivers, and UniBet). It has been bet down to -139, but for the reasons below I think this is still value at that price.
Ford has not been good in the intermediate package this year. Briscoe in particular has been not just bad, but terrible. His incident adjusted speed ranks at the five intermediate tracks this year are 27, 30, 35, 34, and 29. Meanwhile Dillon has consistently been a Top 20 to Top 15 car. Dillon has a strong history at Charlotte as well. He won the 2017 Coke 600, even if he only did lead 2 laps. He has an average finish of 12.5 over the past four races here at Charlotte. I have 1.25u to win 1u at -125 and 1.1u to win 1u at -110. I’m comfortable taking that all the way down to -150 given how poor Briscoe has been at intermediate tracks.
