2024 Cookout Southern 500 Race Picks

NASCAR Cup Series Betting Predictions
Date/Time: Sunday September 1st, 2024. 7:30PM (EST)
Where: Darlington Raceway
TV: USA

Last week, Harrison Burton scored the first win of his career in dramatic fashion at Daytona International Speedway. The victory catapulted Burton from 34th in the points to an immediate playoff berth. As a result, drivers, like Bubba Wallace, who thought they could advance to the playoffs on points have been pushed well outside the cutoff line. In fact, Wallace, Ross Chastain, and Kyle Busch are among the names that could need a victory going into the final race of the regular season this Sunday to keep their playoff hopes alive. On Sunday, the playoff picture will be settled with the running of one of the most prestigious races on the schedule when the green flag waves for the Cookout Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway!

Earlier this year, Darlington produced one of the better races of the season which included a 3-way battle for the win in the closing laps. After Tyler Reddick and Chris Buescher got into each other, Brad Keselowski emerged from the smoke to get his 1st and only win of the season. Going into Sunday’s Southern 500, I believe everyone should have high hopes for another entertaining race. After all, The Lady in Black rarely disappoints from an entertainment standpoint. However, our focus will be aimed at identifying the best betting opportunities. Traditionally, Darlington has been a good track for handicappers and I have confidence that we will find some sharp opportunities to establish a strong betting card!

Earlier today, Bubba Wallace provided some more playoff drama by winning the pole for Sunday’s Southern 500 with a fast lap of 167.146mph. Wallace was the guy that was bumped from the cutoff line with Harrison Burton’s win last week at Daytona. Wallace is 23 points behind Chris Buescher from that cutoff spot and desperately needs some things to fall his way. Wallace is not known for being a strong Darlington talent but proved they have serious speed in qualifying. Meanwhile, Wallace was not the only surprise from qualifying. Carson Hocevar and Chase Briscoe qualified in the 2nd and 3rd positions which perhaps suggest the notion that bettors should pay attention to some dark horses this week!

Handicapping Strategy

As I mentioned in the Xfinity Series preview, I am a strong believer that track history is the most important handicapping tool for Darlington Raceway. Obviously, we will consider other handicapping components like recent performance, practice speeds, etc. However, Darlington Raceway has a very unique layout with minimal grip and an abrasive surface that will cause significant tire wear. This is one of those tracks where single lap speed means absolutely nothing and race speed is everything. As a result, we simply see familiar names that emerge at the front of the field who are able to produce the best race speed by managing their equipment and battling the racetrack. For that reason, we will put a heavy emphasis on how drivers have performed historically at Darlington in order to identify drivers that are worthy of betting consideration!

Loop Data – Darlington Raceway

In order to show historical data at Darlington, I have compiled loop data statistics for the last 5 races at Darlington going back to 2022 which means all the races in our sample include the Next Gen Car. As you will see in the table below, William Byron and Tyler Reddick are the only drivers that have produced triple digit average driver ratings over that time period. Byron won the spring 2023 race at Darlington and has been very strong in nearly every race since then. Meanwhile, Reddick has yet to win at Darlington but has been the most dominant car in each of the last two races at Darlington. If anyone is “due” for a victory at Darlington, Reddick’s recent performances and stats would suggest he should be a frontrunner.

The drivers from Denny Hamlin all the way down through Martin Truex Jr have also produced solid performance stats and are capable of winning at Darlington. Truex is a two-time winner at Darlington but surprisingly his best finish is 18th in the Next Gen Car through 5 starts. Truex has performed much better than the stats suggest but has arguably not been as strong in the new car. If we look further down the performance ratings at Darlington, I would also call out the fact that drivers like Chase Elliott, Chris Buescher, and Alex Bowman have all produced very underwhelming performance ratings. Buescher was in position for a win in the spring race but has been completely hit or miss throughout his career at Darlington. Needless to say, these drivers may not yield the highest confidence level going into Sunday.

Driver	Avg. Rating	Avg. Start	Avg. Mid Race	Avg. Finish	Avg. Pos.	Pass Diff.	Fastest Lap	Laps Led	Total Laps
William Byron	110.0	8.8	4.2	6.4	6.0	-11	95	83	1615
Tyler Reddick	105.7	5.4	5.4	12.2	7.0	-3	135	274	1613
Denny Hamlin	99.7	10.0	5.8	12.8	9.0	-21	89	235	1613
Joey Logano	96.2	7.4	11.0	11.2	9.8	33	59	171	1615
Ross Chastain	92.0	12.2	13.8	19.0	13.2	-12	121	120	1507
Kyle Larson	91.2	8.0	15.2	20.6	13.6	14	98	129	1393
Christopher Bell	88.9	6.8	12.4	12.2	11.0	-21	46	43	1614
Kyle Busch	88.8	8.8	8.2	21.6	12.6	17	68	174	1467
Bubba Wallace	88.6	10.8	14.0	11.0	10.8	11	32	13	1582
Brad Keselowski	88.5	13.0	13.4	10.4	13.2	14	46	48	1488
Martin Truex Jr	87.4	12.6	11.8	25.8	11.6	-5	134	221	1539
Ryan Blaney	81.3	9.6	16.4	16.8	14.2	54	50	5	1451
Erik Jones	79.0	20.8	11.4	16.0	14.4	30	21	24	1582
Ty Gibbs	78.1	13.8	15.0	13.5	15.3	-11	31	34	1322
Chase Elliott	73.8	24.4	17.6	12.8	17.6	85	22	0	1361
Chris Buescher	69.8	16.6	20.8	17.0	17.4	-47	20	21	1611
Alex Bowman	69.4	18.3	20.5	20.0	17.8	-11	17	0	1237
Josh Berry	65.5	28.0	20.0	16.5	21.0	23	5	0	579
Michael McDowell	63.9	14.0	19.2	17.6	19.4	28	20	0	1482
Justin Haley	61.5	24.4	23.6	12.6	22.6	38	11	0	1613
Austin Cindric	61.2	17.8	18.6	20.8	19.6	-27	15	0	1609
Ricky Stenhouse Jr	60.3	18.8	23.0	19.0	22.8	0	13	0	1412
Chase Briscoe	59.2	17.6	21.2	16.8	20.6	-53	4	0	1611
Daniel Suarez	59.1	20.4	19.8	24.0	20.8	-17	22	0	1472
Todd Gilliland	57.7	25.4	26.2	19.0	22.4	-9	12	0	1610
Noah Gragson	55.2	32.5	20.0	20.0	23.5	13	5	0	586
Harrison Burton	54.9	26.8	24.0	19.6	22.6	-13	4	0	1565
Austin Dillon	52.4	19.2	20.6	21.8	22.8	-45	6	0	1516
Carson Hocevar	52.1	18.0	21.0	21.5	22.0	-27	4	2	660
Ryan Preece	50.2	30.7	28.0	20.0	26.3	13	9	0	952
Corey LaJoie	48.0	28.8	27.4	24.2	25.2	-12	11	7	1470
Daniel Hemric	35.9	25.7	25.0	29.0	29.3	-16	1	0	843

Practice and Qualifying Observations

I mentioned above some of the surprise stories from qualifying which featured Wallace, Hocevar, and Briscoe as the top 3 qualifiers. It is also worth mentioning that a lot of heavy hitters are also starting at the front which includes the likes of Kyle Larson, Truex, Byron, and Reddick. With that being said, Darlington is one of those tracks where single lap speed means absolutely nothing. In fact, I would consider qualifying results rather pointless when it comes to handicapping Darlington. Instead, our focus should be geared towards trying to identify the drivers/teams with the best race speed.

During practice, I was watching lap times closely in an attempt to identify outliers. The one outlier that was most evident was the fact that the Ford teams appeared to show a lot of speed. While RFK Racing did not show the same speed as the other Ford teams, both Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske were very strong in practice. While there were a lot of big names (Larson, Hamlin, Byron, Reddick, Truex) towards the top of the lap average charts, I believe there are going to be a few surprise stories that make their way to the front of the field. Based on practice, Alex Bowman and Austin Cindric would be the lesser-known names that appeared to show strong speed!

Betting Targets

In handicapping this race, I believe William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, and Kyle Larson are all in the conversation of the outright favorites. For some reason, Byron is getting the least respect out of that group and is getting nearly twice the value in terms of betting odds. With that being said, I believe Reddick and Larson have been both really good at Darlington in the Next Gen Car. Despite both drivers being among the outright betting favorites, I believe both drivers have a high likelihood of winning on Sunday and deserve betting exposure. I lean towards Larson as the better choice this week but would not blame anyone for wanting exposure to Reddick as well.

Behind the top favorites, I am attracted to the likes of Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain as intermediate betting options. Chastain has been really strong at Darlington but is flying under the radar after a slow start to the weekend. Meanwhile, Wallace is currently facing sort of a must-win scenario, won the pole, and just appears to have the confidence to deliver a walk-off style performance going into Sunday. Deeper into the field, I have identified Erik Jones, Alex Bowman, and Austin Cindric as drivers poised to outrun the ceilings the current betting odds suggests. Bowman and Jones may be the best fantasy options out of that group while Cindric may be the best H2H option.

Deep dark horses for H2H and prop bet options also include Noah Gragson and Ricky Stenhouse Jr as drivers with high value upside in prop and fantasy formats.

2024 Cookout Southern 500 Optimal Lineup

2024 Cookout Southern 500 Betting Picks

*FINAL*

Kyle Larson +550 (1 unit)
William Byron +1000 (.75 unit)
Christopher Bell +1600 (.5 unit)
Bubba Wallace +1800 (.5 unit)
Ross Chastain +2800 (.5 unit)
Alex Bowman +5000 (.25 unit)

H2H Match-Ups and Props

William Byron -115 over Ryan Blaney (3 units)
Bubba Wallace -110 over Ty Gibbs (2 units)
John Hunter Nemecheck -110 over Zane Smith (2 units)
Justin Haley +900 finishes Top 10 (.5 unit)