2021 Steakhouse Elite 200 Race Picks

NASCAR Xfinity Series Betting Preview
Saturday May 8th, 2021. 1:00PM (EST) at Darlington Raceway
by Jay Horne of NASCARWagers.com

On Saturday, NASCAR’s Xfinity Series will get the opportunity to celebrate “Throwback Weekend” with the running of the Steakhouse Elite 200 at Darlington Raceway. This Saturday’s return to Darlington will be the first race since March that the Xfinity Series visited an intermediate speedway. The last two races were held at the smallest venue in Martinsville and the largest venue at Talladega. In fact, the last time the Xfinity Series visited an intermediate speedway was back in March on the slick and abrasive surface at Atlanta Motor Speedway. On Saturday, things will be even tougher as drivers and teams attempt to tackle the Lady in Black at one of the most difficult venues in NASCAR.

The Lady in Black. Too Tough to Tame. No matter what you call it, Darlington Raceway provides an extremely tough challenge for all Xfinity Series competitors this weekend. Though Darlington typically favors the top talents in the sport, we have seen some surprises through the years just as we did last September when Brandon Jones scored a victory at Darlington in the Sport Clips Haircut VFW 200. Despite a couple of decent wins with Ty Gibbs at Daytona’s Road Course and with Jeb Burton recently at Talladega, I believe the Xfinity Series has been the most difficult series to handicap this season. The drivers in the series are very equal in talent. In many ways, handicapping the Xfinity Series has often boiled down to predicting the team that will hit the correct setup and predicting the driver that will prevail in late-race restarts. Obviously, predicting such factors is nearly impossible. As a result, I just have to remind everyone that these races should be attacked with caution until we find sharper value.

Loop Data

Back in March, Justin Allgaier won Echo Park 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Allgaier actually beat Cup Series veteran Martin Truex and others in the closing laps to pull out the victory. While Darlington is definitely different from Atlanta, I would say the Echo Park 250 is probably the closest race we have in comparison this season in the Xfinity Series which I believe should at least be kept in mind as we compile line-ups this week. However, the Xfinity Series also competed at Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this season as well. Homestead is another venue with similar conditions: low grip, heavy tire wear, racing groove changes, and similar needs from the driver seat.

Despite just two races at these venues, I decided to put together combined loop data stats from both Atlanta and Homestead. Granted, small sample sizes can be impacted more significantly due to outliers which may require more attention to detail. Still if observed correctly, we can determine an expectation baseline. For example, A.J Allmendinger leads the average rating category despite finishes of 14th (Homestead) and 5th (Atlanta). Meanwhile, Justin Haley has the best average running position (6.5) out of all drivers on our list. Haley has yet to post a single top 5 finish in 2021 so perhaps that is a product of finishing worse than the performance indicates. Keep in mind, these statistics on a small sample size are just for observational purposes. We should not be basing predictions on this data alone.

Driver	Avg. Rating	Avg. Start	Avg. Mid Race	Avg. Finish	Avg. Pos.	Pass Diff.	Fastest Laps	Laps Led	Total Laps
A.J. Allmendinger	106.6	13.5	16.5	10	12.5	75	27	45	342
Justin Allgaier	104.9	12.5	8.0	20.0	13.5	29	29	47	261
Justin Haley	102.8	10.5	3	7.5	6.5	17	12	5	342
Austin Cindric	101.0	1	11.5	9.5	9.5	14	29	69	342
Myatt Snider	100.1	9.5	6.5	6.0	9.5	-7	4	5	342
Noah Gragson	100.0	26.5	10.5	19	10.5	94	21	34	328
Daniel Hemric	96.1	6.5	11	6.5	10.0	24	4	0	342
Harrison Burton	93.7	4	22.0	21.5	15	15	16	1	233
Michael Annett	91.8	22.5	9.5	10.5	11.0	30	0	0	342
Riley Herbst	91.4	18	6.5	9	12.5	30	5	0	342
Brett Moffitt	86.6	7	25	24	19.5	-1	9	6	218
Brandon Jones	86.2	10	24	20	18	35	8	6	311
Jeremy Clements	85.9	9.5	12.5	11	11.5	11	1	3	342
Ryan Sieg	82.8	28.5	12	9.5	14	67	0	0	342
Jeb Burton	82.6	3.5	6	15	12.5	-25	0	0	341
Josh Berry	78.7	21.0	16.5	24.5	17.0	53	21	0	309
Santino Ferrucci	66.8	16.5	28	23.0	24.5	-24	7	0	340
Landon Cassill	65.3	15.5	21.0	17.0	20.5	6	0	0	342
Alex Labbe	62.8	30.5	21.5	16.5	22	-4	0	0	342
Jeffrey Earnhardt	62.5	31	20.5	21	21	-15	0	0	342
Tommy Joe Martins	61.2	21	17	18.5	19.5	-65	0	0	342
Josh Williams	59.0	17	27.5	21.5	25.5	-28	0	0	341
Colby Howard	55.4	25.5	16.0	29.0	24.0	-49	0	6	272
Timmy Hill	55.4	25	27.5	18.5	25	0	0	0	342
Kyle Weatherman	54.6	21.5	28	27	25	-19	0	0	340
Brandon Brown	54.2	5.5	24	34	23.5	-65	2	4	312
Bayley Currey	50.3	24	25	30	25.5	-32	0	0	310
David Starr	47.9	39	27	24.5	27	-4	0	0	340
Jade Buford	44.7	26.0	28.5	23.5	28	-46	0	0	340
Jesse Little	43.6	25.5	25.0	27.5	26	-47	0	0	339
Joe Graf Jr	43.3	20.0	34.0	28.5	29.0	-29	0	0	339
Ryan Vargas	41.1	34.5	28.5	28.0	28.5	-35	0	0	339
Chad Finchum	37.7	38.5	34.5	31.5	31	8	0	0	238
Dexter Bean	35.8	30.5	34	26.5	33.5	-31	0	0	335
Gray Gaulding	34.0	29.5	35.5	32.5	34	-17	0	0	328
Matt Mills	33.2	28.0	35.0	32.0	33.5	-26	0	0	334

Tire Notes

I wanted to quickly mention a few important facts surrounding the tire notes for this weekend’s race. For starters, teams will utilize the same tire compound that was used in both Xfinity Series races in 2020. This likely helps drivers that are returning with the same teams slightly. However, the bigger note to mention is that teams will have just 5 sets of tires for the entire race. Despite being the same length, the Truck Series actually has 6 sets of tires for Friday night’s LiftKits4Less.com 200. I think this is important because it reduces the extra opportunity of late-race pit strategy. As everyone knows if a team can save a set of tires for a late caution, it could be a race winning move. At least for the Xfinity Series, that is potentially less likely to happen with even fewer tires this Saturday.

Betting Targets

Betting odds are a bit all over the place for Saturday’s Steakhouse Elite 200. For futures/wins, I think Justin Allgaier provides the best overall value at 9-1 odds. Allgaier captured the victory at Atlanta which is the closest comparable venue and also yielded a strong 3rd place finish in this race last year. If we see long green flag runs, Allgaier is a steal at 9-1 odds. I believe AJ Allmendinger and Noah Gragson are both dangerous threats for Saturday’s event. However, I just don’t see the value in their odds. This seems like a track where Gragson would shine but his odds are among the overall favorites which is extremely conservative.

If I am being completely honest, I don’t have a good gauge on what to expect in this race. Darlington is such a difficult track and while it favors the drivers; it can also be very sensitive to handling issues from a setup standpoint. Without practices, it’s hard to identify who will hit or miss those setup combinations. Based on all the handicapping angles I have observed, I will say that Justin Haley and Myatt Snider are a few of my favorite drivers to target in match-ups if we can find sufficient value. Haley and the Kaulig Racing organization has shown excellent speed on the intermediate speedways this season. Despite borderline top 10 results in his prior 3 starts at Darlington, I feel like this is a good opportunity for Haley to have a career-best Darlington performance.

Meanwhile, Snider continues to be severely disrespected in terms of betting odds. Snider piloted the #93 car to a 10th place finish at Darlington last September which was a pretty strong accomplishment based on the equipment challenges under Rod Sieg. Snider has already delivered a stunning victory at one of NASCAR’s more difficult venues at Homestead and I feel like this is another excellent opportunity for the young driver to overachieve. At 55-1 odds, Snider deserves some big underdog consideration but provides even better H2H value based on the pairings this week.

Drivers to Fade

As I alluded to earlier, I am keeping my predictions on a really conservative platform for Saturday’s race. I apologize if that is boring and not providing the extended content that I normally provide. However, I don’t force predictions or expectations. Simply put, I don’t have any outright fades for Saturday’s Steakhouse Elite 200. Some of the drivers that are worthy of consideration included Daniel Hemric and Brandon Jones. Jones is obviously the sharper fade due to last year’s victory at Darlington. The win was really surprising considering Jones best Darlington finish was 7th in the 5 starts prior to the victory. I’m just not convinced that Jones should be among the top group of drivers just from that victory. History tells us that is likely an outlier and the #19 team has not been performing well in recent weeks. For Daniel Hemric, he has posted just 1 top 10 finish (6th) in 4 career starts. Like Jones, Hemric is listed among the top group of drivers. Unlike Jones, Hemric has shown a lot of speed in recent weeks which raises the risk around fading the #18 car.

Draftkings Steakhouse Elite 200 Optimal Lineup

2021 Steakhouse Elite 200 Betting Picks

*Final*

Justin Allgaier +900 (1 unit)
Noah Gragson +600 (1 unit)
Justin Haley +1500 (.5 unit)
Myatt Snider +5500 (.25 unit)

H2H Match-Ups and Props

Justin Allgaier -130 over Brandon Jones (2 units)
Justin Haley +130 over Daniel Hemric (2 units)
Myatt Snider +115 over Brett Moffitt (2 units)