2021 Alsco Uniforms 302 Race Picks

NASCAR Xfinity Series Betting Preview
Saturday September 25th, 7:30PM (EST) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
by Jay Horne of NASCARWagers.com

The opening race in the Xfinity Series’ playoffs will take place Saturday night with the running of the Alsco Uniforms 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Last week, A.J Allmendinger captured the regular season championship by stealing the victory from Austin Cindric on a green-white-checkered restart. The late race run-in and fierce battles between Cindric and Allmendinger have seemingly created a rivalry between the two stars going into the most important stretch of upcoming races. Allmendinger also captured a victory in the spring race at Las Vegas back in March in the Alsco Uniforms 300. As a result, Allmendinger rolls into Sin City as the hottest driver in the series with a ton of momentum!

Perhaps the most important item to note this week is that this Saturday’s Alsco Uniforms 302 will be the first race at a 1.5 mile venue since early July at Atlanta. The Xfinity Series has frequented the road courses and short tracks through the 2nd half of the season. Personally, I believe this is a good thing for bettors because most casual fans will mistake recent performance trends for success at Las Vegas. Simply put, the 1.5 mile tracks are heavily geared towards aerodynamics and horsepower due to the amount of on-throttle time from the cockpit. When you consider this Vegas surface also produces a lot of grip and below average tire wear, this is really one of those intermediate venues where raw speed is the main ingredient for success.

At this point in the season, we are rarely going to find significant underdog value throughout the remainder of the season. Guys like Cindric and AJ Allmendinger have already combined for 9 victories this season. Meanwhile, the likes of Justin Allgaier, Ty Gibbs, and Noah Gragson are threats every week that can never be ruled out. However, I do believe we will have the opportunity to exploit match-ups this week as we put heavier emphasis on 1.5 mile track performance. I have compiled loop data stats below from several of the comparable events this season on the 1.5 mile tracks and believe that should be the baseline of our expectations for this Saturday’s race opposed to recent performance trends.

Loop Data

The compilation of loop data metrics in the below table include the spring race at Las Vegas, Charlotte, Texas, and most-recent July race at Atlanta. I specifically excluded the early season races at Homestead and Atlanta because those tracks have significant tire wear which takes away from the raw speed trends that we are attempting to identify. Also, I believe it is important to call out that Ty Gibbs is not included in the below data because he has only made 1 start this year on the 1.5 mile surfaces. However, Gibbs should definitely be given the utmost credit since he parlayed that one start into a victory at Charlotte.

As you can see below, Daniel Hemric leads all drivers with an impressive 116.4 rating. I was slightly surprised to see Hemric at the top of this data set. I realized Hemric has been fast at the 1.5 mile venues but was slightly surprised to see his averages rated higher than both Cindric and Allmendinger. Throughout the remainder of the list, there are not many huge surprises. Allgaier, Gragson, Harrison Burton, Brandon Jones, and Justin Haley have all produced nearly identical ratings. Perhaps a bigger surprise is the fact that Jeb Burton has underperformed among the Kaulig Racing cars in this data set. In fact, Burton has an average running position of 16.8. Despite a 2nd place finish at Atlanta, Burton has struggled on the higher-grip surfaces which should be taken into consideration for match-up purposes.

Driver	Avg. Rating	Avg. Start	Avg. Mid Race	Avg. Finish	Avg. Pos.	Pass Diff.	Fastest Lap	Laps Led	Total Laps
Daniel Hemric	116.4	3.3	2.5	16.0	4.3	9	77	237	721
A.J. Allmendinger	112.6	4.8	4.8	13.3	7.3	13	65	56	663
Austin Cindric	111.7	3.5	6.3	4.8	7.0	30	49	59	735
Justin Allgaier	99.7	21.8	6.3	8.5	8.3	50	28	31	735
Noah Gragson	98.5	24.0	5.3	10.5	8.5	59	12	5	722
Brandon Jones	97.6	8.5	7.3	13.8	10.3	28	20	44	689
Harrison Burton	97.1	14.5	4.3	16.5	8.3	71	17	5	727
Justin Haley	97.1	6.5	10.8	10.0	9.3	28	29	6	735
Jeb Burton	84.8	8.3	20.3	13.3	16.8	-61	5	1	723
Brett Moffitt	79.3	15.3	15.3	18.3	14.5	79	8	0	714
Riley Herbst	78.1	8.8	24.8	20.8	17.8	22	3	7	591
Brandon Brown	77.0	19.0	13.0	14.8	15.3	15	2	0	734
Jeremy Clements	75.4	13.3	16.3	12.3	17.0	-7	1	0	734
Ryan Sieg	71.1	12.0	19.5	23.0	19.8	44	2	4	559
Josh Berry	69.1	20.8	17.8	20.3	18.0	22	1	0	685
Tommy Joe Martins	65.6	24.5	16.0	20.3	19.5	-24	0	0	721
Myatt Snider	65.2	10.0	21.3	28.0	21.0	-18	0	0	707
Alex Labbe	63.9	19.3	23.0	20.5	20.8	-52	0	0	716
Josh Williams	60.0	21.8	22.8	18.0	21.3	-64	0	0	734
Landon Cassill	58.9	21.3	22.0	21.8	24.3	-24	0	0	698
Jade Buford	54.8	23.0	24.5	20.0	24.5	-48	3	0	731
Colby Howard	52.4	32.3	24.3	24.5	25.0	-24	0	0	714
Jeffrey Earnhardt	50.5	29.3	28.8	24.8	27.5	12	0	0	669
Ryan Vargas	47.6	25.5	31.3	19.3	28.5	-74	0	0	734
Joe Graf Jr	42.5	31.3	27.7	24.7	28.3	-67	0	0	525
Bayley Currey	42.3	39.0	29.7	32.0	32.0	61	0	0	361
Kyle Weatherman	42.0	28.7	29.3	34.0	29.7	-30	0	3	446
Jesse Little	38.8	29.5	32.5	25.3	30.8	-33	0	0	728
Matt Mills	38.1	25.8	34.5	31.5	31.5	-35	0	0	510

Betting Targets

I am not exactly overly eager to attack futures (win) bets this week. Allmendinger pulled off a slight upset in the spring race and has really found a groove in recent weeks. Cindric has been fast everywhere which is the same for Ty Gibbs. Meanwhile, Allgaier and Gragson are capable of pulling off victories. Meanwhile, we have performance metrics pointing at potential consideration towards Daniel Hemric as the highest rated driver in our 1.5 mile data set. To make matters worse, the odds are not exactly appetizing for any of those options. These are the types of races where it is easy to overextend betting cards with risk with minimal ROI potential and that is what I will be trying to avoid.

For H2H targets, I do like both Hemric and Brandon Jones especially if we can find those drivers in match-ups against mediocre competition. Jones and Hemric both posted outstanding driver ratings in the spring race at Vegas. While I know that it has been a lifetime since the spring race, I think the JGR cars have shown the speed to warrant targets in the form of match-ups. For bottom-tier match-ups, I really like Brandon Brown as a potential target and fantasy option. Brown has been really good at the 1.5 mile tracks this year and is a legitimate Top 10 threat that is usually overlooked. If we can find Brown in bottom-tier match-ups, he can be targeted with confidence.

*I realize I did not make any outright win predictions and I’m not trying to force picks with increased uncertainty. If I had to choose, I believe Cindric, Gibbs, Allmendinger/Hemric would be my top choices. The problem will be finding betting value to compensate for the volatility at the front of the field!

Drivers to Fade

As mentioned earlier in the loop data, Jeb Burton should be among the drivers that are considered as a potential fade candidate. Burton earned his way into the playoffs with his victory at Talladega and has posted several quality finishes in recent weeks which includes top 5 finishes in 2 of the last 4 races. I believe that bettors can pivot against this recent success with more probable betting targets. Another driver that has not exactly overly impressed on the 1.5 mile surfaces is Josh Berry. Now, I am a fan of Josh Berry’s success and rooting for him due to his racing background. However, he just does not seem very sharp on the larger layouts which also likely comes from his experience. Either way, I think Berry is a solid fade candidate in the intermediate driver range when you can get much better value on guys like Brandon Jones, Justin Haley, and even Harrison Burton across match-up platforms.

Draftkings Alsco Uniforms 302 Optimal Lineup

2021 Alsco Uniforms 302 Race Picks

*Final*

Ty Gibbs +400 (1 unit)
AJ Allmendinger +750 (.75 unit)
Daniel Hemric +1200 (.75 unit)
Brandon Jones +1750 (.5 unit)

Match-Ups and Props

Brett Moffitt -115 over Ty Dillon (2 units)
Brandon Jones +125 over Harrison Burton (2 units)
Daniel Hemric -140 over Justin Haley (2 units)