2022 Bank of America ROVAL 400 Race Picks

NASCAR Cup Series Betting Predictions
Date/Time: Sunday October 9th, 2022. 2:00PM (EST)
Where: Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL
TV: NBC

NASCAR’s best return to the ROVAL on Sunday for another critical chapter in the Cup Series’ playoffs. Last week, Chase Elliott punched his ticket to the Round of 8 with a victory at Talladega Superspeedway. Elliott’s win marked the first time this season that a championship contender was victorious in the playoffs which is completely uncommon. However, the Next Gen Car continues to yield unprecedented parity which can also be evidenced in the extremely tight points battle that will feature 11 drivers fighting for points and/or a win in Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 in order to keep their championship hopes alive.

For bettors, road course racing has become fairly common in the Cup Series. In fact, Sunday’s annual return to the ROVAL will be the 6th and final road course race of the season. Earlier in the year, we witnessed a pair of surprising first-time career winners in the TrackHouse Racing duo of Ross Chastain (COTA) and Daniel Suarez (Sonoma). However, the road course racing has become more consistent during the 2nd half of the season with more of the same drivers emerging at the front of the field.

Tyler Reddick has become the new darling at the road course venues with victories at Road America and Indianapolis. Reddick has been the best driver on the road courses throughout the latter half of the season but we have also seen strong runs from Kyle Larson (winner at Watkins Glen) and Chase Elliott who basically ran away with the all the road courses races just a year ago. If nothing else, we should have a pretty good gauge of baseline expectations going into Sunday’s final road course race of the season.

Handicapping Message

If you happened to catch my Xfinity Series preview yesterday, then you will recall that I put heavy emphasis on how stage racing would impact racing at the ROVAL. With the points battle being extremely tight throughout the field, every point matters and that is why the majority of competitors will be foregoing optimal race strategy to ensure they are capitalizing on every point. Meanwhile for drivers like Chase Elliott (already locked in), Tyler Reddick (out of playoffs), and others; they do not have to worry about stage points and can focus on optimal betting strategy. While things can certainly change throughout the race in the realm of strategy, we should put heavier focus on the points factor this week because strategy will be very important, especially going into the final stage. Therefore, we may not want to put any additional risk into betting selections that will likely not be attacking with the optimal strategy.

Road Course Loop Data

As usual, I have compiled loop data statistics for all of the prior road course events this season to provide bettors a view of in-season performance trends at this style of racing. Somewhat surprisingly, Chase Elliott leads all drivers with a 112.9 average rating. I say somewhat surprising because Elliott has not captured a victory this season at any of the road course venues which is rather shocking considering he is one of the best road course drivers in the sport’s history. Despite the winless feat, Elliott remains one of the Cup Series’ top threats at these venues which is evident in our data below.

Aside from obvious observations from Elliott and the emerging Tyler Reddick, I thought Austin Cindric and Michael McDowell’s names were the most surprising on this list. The rookie Cindric is outperforming the majority of his peers despite limited experience at the majority of these venues. Meanwhile, Michael McDowell has been absolutely outstanding in this Next Gen Car and his road course stats show that he has been the 3rd best driver in average running position this season. Therefore, keep the likes of Cindric, McDowell, and even Chris Buescher on your radar this week for those less popular names that should yield higher ceilings.

Driver	Avg. Rating	Avg. Start	Avg. Mid Race	Avg. Finish	Avg. Pos.	Pass Diff.	Fastest Lap	Laps Led	Total Laps
Chase Elliott	112.9	4.8	8.2	6.8	7.4	14	67	91	417
Tyler Reddick	110.7	3.8	13.6	9.8	9.4	-57	36	58	404
Daniel Suarez	101.6	9.4	13.2	12.6	11.2	-39	23	62	417
Austin Cindric	99.6	10.0	20.0	7.0	11.6	-26	11	11	417
Michael McDowell	98.0	9.4	11.4	7.6	10.0	-83	8	14	417
Ross Chastain	97.6	14.8	10.6	12.0	11.2	-23	22	31	417
Chris Buescher	95.5	11.0	15.0	9.6	14.2	-91	26	4	417
Ryan Blaney	91.4	13.2	6.2	14.6	11.4	-19	7	22	417
Kyle Larson	90.5	8.2	17.0	16.6	14.4	-6	28	31	388
A.J. Allmendinger	88.4	16.6	16.0	14.0	13.8	-19	13	5	416
Christopher Bell	84.0	19.2	13.0	13.6	16.2	-61	14	17	417
Cole Custer	79.6	14.4	22.2	15.8	15.2	-64	2	7	417
Alex Bowman	78.6	14.2	18.0	15.2	16.2	-58	7	0	396
Joey Logano	76.5	11.6	14.0	16.8	15.8	143	3	21	417
William Byron	75.0	20.0	20.4	18.0	17.4	3	6	0	410
Martin Truex Jr	74.6	22.0	18.0	18.0	16.0	-90	4	0	417
Kevin Harvick	74.1	22.2	15.2	14.0	18.2	-73	5	0	395
Chase Briscoe	72.7	9.6	17.4	21.0	15.4	-15	6	18	417
Austin Dillon	69.7	19.0	22.2	19.8	17.6	-11	0	6	414
Denny Hamlin	67.1	13.8	22.0	20.0	18.8	-51	3	4	417
Kyle Busch	66.2	12.0	24.6	26.0	18.4	73	11	0	416
Brad Keselowski	64.7	17.2	21.0	19.2	21.4	9	10	3	413
Todd Gilliland	61.6	22.6	23.0	21.4	24.0	-11	4	9	355
Joey Hand	61.0	21.6	19.4	27.2	21.0	-39	2	2	407
Erik Jones	59.2	31.2	11.0	16.4	21.2	113	0	0	417
Justin Haley	58.2	18.2	16.2	17.6	23.6	102	5	0	417
Ty Dillon	58.0	31.0	20.4	22.6	21.6	10	0	0	391
Ty Gibbs	54.0	21.0	20.0	21.5	24.5	-14	2	0	176
Harrison Burton	53.5	22.2	16.4	19.6	23.2	94	0	1	417
Ricky Stenhouse Jr	52.6	30.4	21.2	21.8	23.2	62	0	0	400
Bubba Wallace	49.1	23.4	18.8	29.8	25.2	35	0	0	276
Aric Almirola	45.1	23.8	24.6	25.6	27.6	29	2	0	355
Corey LaJoie	42.5	32.0	27.6	29.8	27.6	-40	2	0	391
Cody Ware	33.6	34.8	32.4	29.8	31.4	86	1	0	411
Loris Hezemans	30.3	35.0	32.3	35.3	33.3	-45	0	0	194

Practice Observations

Earlier today, Joey Logano won the Busch Pole Award for Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 with a fast lap of 103.424mph. Logano edged William Byron for the top spot by a narrow margin. Byron is among the group of drivers that desperately needs a strong performance on Sunday to keep his championship hopes alive. While I’m not going to discuss qualifying results, I do want to mention some rapid fire observations from practice to consider.

First and foremost, William Byron was likely the best performer in practice. Byron posted the 3rd fastest lap (behind AJ Allmendinger and Austin Cindric) but more importantly had the best overall average and 5-lap average in the brief practice session. For those that may not know, Byron has always been fast at the ROVAL and has a pair of 6th place finishes in his 4 career starts. However, those stats do not tell the entire story. Byron has led at least 23 laps (109 lap races at ROVAL) in each of the last 3 events but has routinely failed to get the finishes the team deserved. So while Byron’s speed may seem slightly surprising, it should not be for anyone that remembers or goes back to watch previous races at the ROVAL.

Strictly from practices, I also thought Austin Cindric belonged in that top-tier category after analyzing the raw lap times. Other drivers that also seemed to have solid speed included the likes of Joey Logano, Daniel Suarez, Michael McDowell, and Tyler Reddick. Meanwhile, there were a few guys that displayed underwhelming results in practices that are worth mentioning as well. The drivers in that particular category included respectable road course talents like Chase Elliott, Martin Truex, and Erik Jones. Out of that group, Elliott bounced back for a decent 9th place qualifying effort while Truex (19th) and Jones (26th) struggles seemingly continued.

Betting Targets

Normally, I would frown upon bettors trying to predict race strategies and letting those predictions influence their betting decisions. However, I think we have to incorporate the race strategy into our betting decisions this week because of the high likelihood that so many of the playoff contenders need stage points and we can rely on the majority of those drivers sticking to that strategy. For the rest of the field, we will see a lot of drivers short-pitting and trying to flip the field position at the beginning/ending of each stage. Therefore, we have to take in those factors in our H2H and prop bet decisions this week.

While I will not be able to explain my thoughts in detail on every driver and my expectations of how strategy might impact their performance on Sunday, I will say that I am putting William Byron towards the top of my betting list in all formats despite the fact he will have to race for stage points all afternoon. I think Byron has the talent and speed to win this race outright despite the obstacles ahead. With Byron, I am going to list teammate Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick in that top-tier betting category as well for obvious reasons. Reddick has been the hottest road course driver in NASCAR through the 2nd half of the season. Meanwhile, Elliott is still overdue for another road course victory based on performance stats and he has won 2 of the 4 all-time races at the ROVAL as well.

Deeper in the field is where I’m hoping we will make our money this week in the form of H2H and prop bets. Michael McDowell and Cole Custer are some names that I think we produce much higher ceilings than current odds suggest. McDowell has been running so well that he is a darkhorse for the outright victory and provides significant value in H2H formats. Meanwhile, Custer is a bottom-tier driver that has some underrated road course abilities. After a solid practice earlier today, I think Custer has sleeper value in lower-tier match-ups. Lastly, I would also say don’t let Austin Cindric nor Daniel Suarez fly completely past radars as well this week. Both drivers have some high-risk/high-reward potential.

Draftkings Bank of America ROVAL 400 Optimal Lineup

2022 Bank of America ROVAL 400 Race Picks

*Final*

Tyler Reddick +600 (1 unit)
William Byron +900 (1 unit)
Austin Cindric +1200 (.75 unit)
Michael McDowell +3000 (.5 unit)

H2H Match-ups and Props

Michael McDowell -110 over Kyle Busch (3 units)
Tyler Reddick -130 over Kyle Larson (2 units)
William Byron +245 wins Group B (Suarez, Blaney, Cindric)(1 unit)
Ty Gibbs +350 finishes Top 10 (1 unit)