2024 Food City 500 Race Picks

NASCAR Cup Series Betting Predictions
Date/Time: Sunday March 17th, 2024. 3:00PM (EST)
Where: Bristol Motor Speedway
TV: FOX

After 3 years of experimenting with dirt, the annual spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway will return to the traditional concrete surface for the running of Sunday’s Food City 500. Personally, I enjoyed NASCAR’s attempts to go dirt racing but also admit that the dirt races never appeared to meet the expectations that most fans had wanted. More importantly, I would much rather prefer two dates on the concrete to help our handicapping picks when the Bristol Night Race returns in the fall. For Sunday’s Food City 500, this will be another learning opportunity for the 2024 season and we will look to identify some trends to potentially help us turn a profit!

Last week, Christopher Bell earned the first short-track victory of the season with a dominating performance at Phoenix Raceway. In that event, NASCAR experimented with some changes to the short-track rules package; however it did not appear to cause any significant changes to the racing product. It is worth mentioning that last week’s rules package changes will not be in effect again this week. For this week’s race at Bristol, we should expect track position to continue to remain extremely important and passing to be fairly difficult especially after 20 or so green flag laps.

On Saturday, Ryan Blaney won the first battle of track position for the weekend by taking the pole for the Food City 500 with a fast lap of 124.954mph. The reigning Cup Series champion continues to remain hot to start the 2024 campaign. Blaney currently leads the points and is the only driver in the series with 3 top 5 finishes through the first 4 races. With that being said, Blaney is still seeking his first victory of the season and first victory overall at Bristol Motor Speedway. For about the last year, Blaney has far exceeded his typical stats and he has emerged an elite driver. However, I believe bettors should take a close look at Blaney’s stats at Bristol before laying any chalky bets. We will discuss Blaney’s stats and discuss some of the drivers that bettors have on their radar for Sunday!

Handicapping Strategy

In recent weeks, we have leveraged performance trends at specific track types to help guide our expectations. We consistently looked at drivers that performed well at superspeedways, the teams that were performing well at intermediate 1.5 mile tracks, and other similar narratives. For this week’s race at Bristol, I believe our handicapping focus should point specifically to drivers’ historical trends at Bristol. This track is truly unlike any other in the Cup Series and relies mostly on driver input to produce fast lap times. As a result, there are a small group of drivers that consistently emerge at the front and there are other drivers that consistently outperform their expectations. We will be looking at both groups of drivers to find potential betting targets for the Food City 500.

Bristol – Notes

• Kyle Busch leads all active drivers with 8 career victories at Bristol.
• Denny Hamlin (3), Brad Keselowski (3), Joey Logano (2), Kyle Larson, and Chris Buescher are the only other former winners at Bristol entering Sunday.
• Kyle Larson (122.0), Christopher Bell (115.3), and Denny Hamlin (114.5) have the best average driver ratings at Bristol over the last 3 races.
• Christopher Bell leads all drivers with 330 laps led over the last 3 races.
• Christopher Bell, Chris Buescher, and Kyle Larson are the only two drivers with top 5 finishes in the last two races at Bristol in the Next Gen Car.
• Erik Jones’s 14.3 average finishing position is statistically among his best tracks.
• Behind Kyle Larson (5.8), Denny Hamlin has the 2nd best average finishing position (9.4) among active drivers.
• Despite having 8 career wins, Kyle Busch has finished 20th or worst in each of the last 3 races at Bristol.
• Joey Logano has finished outside the top 10 in 6 straight races at Bristol.
• Ty Gibbs finished 5th last year, in just his 2nd career start, at Bristol.
• Martin Truex Jr has a dismal 21.7 average finishing position at Bristol over the last 10 races.
• The eventual race winner has started inside the top 5 starting spots in 5 of the last 6 races.

Practice Observations

Before capturing the pole on Saturday, Ryan Blaney was also the winner of practice. Blaney posted the fastest lap (127.682mph) of the split-group sessions and also led all other drivers in most consecutive lap categories which is a good indicator of race speed. Behind Blaney, Ross Chastain, Bubba Wallace, and Christopher Bell were among the most impressive guys on the stopwatch. I would also give notable shout-outs to Noah Gragson and John Hunter Nemechek who both appeared to be much faster than many would have expected. In fact I was so impressed by both Gragson and Nemechek, I consider their ceilings to be much higher than current betting odds suggests.

While practice speeds are a smaller part of the handicapping equation this week, I would also like to point out the drivers that appeared to be “off” in terms of speed in practice which could possibly hint at those drivers that could under-achieve this weekend. Leading the list is Kyle Larson in the #5 car. If you look at our notes above, Larson has been the best driver, statistically, at Bristol in the last several races. However, Larson was far down the speed charts on Saturday and it appeared to carry over into qualifying with a 17th place result. Thought to potentially be the favorite, Larson appears to be trending in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, guys like Alex Bowman, Martin Truex Jr, and Austin Cindric stood out as guys that were far below their expectations going into the weekend.

Betting Targets

Judging at recently posted odds following qualifying, I must admit that odds-makers have taken a sharp strategy. Despite poor practice/qualifying results, we did not get any extra value on guys like Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin who have consistently outperformed the masses. Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney appear to be the most likely first-time Bristol winners this Sunday yet both drivers are among the top 3 overall favorites which eliminates any “value” from the conversation. As a result, I don’t think we find any betting value until we get to guys like William Byron, Kyle Busch, and Ross Chastain. All 3 drivers are undervalued based on my projected ceilings.

Since odds-makers have eliminated value on the most likely winners, our sharper targets will likely come in the form of H2H drivers. As I alluded to in the practice observations, I really like Noah Gragson in bottom-tier match-ups and potential top 10 props. Among other options, I would also consider the likes of Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, and John Hunter Nemechek to be viable options that could easily exceed current expectations. On the flip side, we could also be looking for potential fade opportunities against guys like Blaney, Martin Truex Jr, and Alex Bowman. Blaney’s career statistics at Bristol are rather dismal with just two top 5 finishes in 14 career starts. As the outright betting favorite, Blaney’s is severely overvalued despite his ceiling on Sunday. Meanwhile, Truex and Bowman are two drivers that have struggled historically at Bristol and also appeared to be “off” in the speed department in Saturday’s sessions. Therefore if we can find reasonable targets on the opposite side of Truex and Bowman, it may be worth betting consideration as well.

2024 Food City 500 Race Betting Picks

*FINAL*

Christopher Bell +700 (1 unit)
Chase Elliott +1000 (.75 unit)
William Byron +1600 (.5 unit)
Ross Chastain +3000 (.5 unit)

H2H Match-Ups and Props

William Byron -145 over Tyler Reddick (2 units)
Chris Buescher +105 over Ross Chastain (2 units)
Michael McDowell +110 over Chase Briscoe (1 unit)
Bubba Wallace +1000 finishes as Top Toyota (.5 unit)
Erik Jones +1000 finishes Top 5 (.5 unit)