2017 Overton’s 150 Race Predictions

2017 Overton’s 150 Race Predictions
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Betting Preview
Saturday July 29th, 1:00PM (EST) at Pocono Raceway
by Jay Horne of NASCARWagers.com, NASCAR Handicapping Service

The Camping World Truck Series will bat in the leadoff position on Saturday as NASCAR pitches a double header. The Truck Series will drop the green flag at Pocono Raceway in the Overton’s 150 around 1:00pm (EST) and the Xfinity Series will follow suit from Iowa Speedway shortly afterwards around 3:30pm (EST) for a full afternoon of racing. For starters, we take this time to preview tomorrow’s Truck Series race at Pocono Raceway which will also be the site of Sunday’s Overton’s 400 in the Cup Series. Therefore take a look as we provide our 2017 Overton’s 150 race predictions!

Surprisingly there are just 30 cars on the entry list for tomorrow’s race which means we will have a smaller field than normal. If you consider Pocono’s large 2.5 mile surface, smaller field, and history for long green flag runs; then we could definitely see strategy play out Sunday afternoon. On Friday, a few teams elected to run their trucks out of gas in practice just to measure exactly how far they could stretch the fuel mileage. Fuel mileage is going to be a huge topic on Saturday and likely have a big impact on the outcome. If you consider the fuel window is roughly around 35 laps, then Trucks could potentially pit before the end of stage 2 and stretch it the distance through the final 30 laps in stage 3. Therefore, the potential is there for strategy to really shake things up throughout the running order.

Outside of the strategy card, I think it is safe to say that everyone will likely be chasing Kyle Busch in the #51 truck. Busch is always a favorite when he suits up in the lower series. He is one of the best drivers in NASCAR and has also built the best team in the Truck Series with Kyle Busch Motorsports. The KBM Trucks have been the class of the Truck Series for several years. I always consider Pocono a track where performance is aided by raw speed perhaps more than most tracks around the NASCAR circuit. Since all the KBM trucks have been dominant in terms of speed, then Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell easily emerge as the two favorites going into Saturday’s race.

Busch has won 2 of his 4 starts this season in the Truck Series, owns a 2015 win at Pocono in this race, and clearly looked like the truck to beat in Friday’s practices. However, Christopher Bell has been the best of the Truck Series regulars this season and already has 3 wins on the season. Bell also looked very good in terms of speed in Friday’s practices and even posted the fastest time in the rain shortened final session. I personally felt like Busch had the most speed but the gap in his lap times compared to Bell’s were rather miniscule. Expect both drivers to be heavily favorites going into Saturday.

Unless Kyle Busch runs into trouble, I am not sure if I like Bell’s chances as a secondary option despite the speed he has shown throughout the week. If strategy does come into play, the KBM trucks will likely be under a similar gameplan. If I am going to take a secondary driver, I would rather have someone that may take a gamble for track position in attempt to win the race. Now who is going to take that chance? Nobody knows for sure yet or even if they will have the opportunity depending on how the race unfolds. However, I do like like other drivers may put themselves in position to take advantage of strategy or potentially even same KBM misfortune. I personally like Johnny Sauter based on his performance this season, raw speed, and experience at Pocono Raceway. If you follow our betting forums, I took Sauter early in the week at openers and he was 3rd in the final practice behind Bell and Busch. Therefore, I feel like Sauter will likely be the only guy that has a chance of keeping pace with the leaders and his odds will likely not get any better.

As far as the rest of the field is concerned, I do not have much confidence in anyone else. I usually like to throw out a few potential long shots but I have not seen much evidence for faith in any long shots so far this weekend. Chase Briscoe and Matt Crafton would be obvious choices. However, both teams have struggled significantly. Crafton even stated they were quote “terrible” after practice 1. The top 3 trucks that I mentioned earlier were so much better than the competition that I just do not see any “surprise” stories even in the case of strategy in the final stage. From a H2H perspective, if you can find Justin Haley in matchups then I believe he has some great potential. Haley finished 6th at Texas which is another track that relies heavily on raw horsepower in the Truck Series. Haley was really solid in both practices and even won the ARCA race earlier today. Therefore, I believe he will run well!

2017 Overton’s 150 Race Predictions

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Johnny Sauter +650 (1.5 units)

Two Team Parlay

Kyle Busch -125 wins Overton’s 150
Team 2 – Open
Risking 1.5 units to win: TBD

H2H Matchups and Props

Johnny Sauter -125 over Matt Crafton (3 units)