2022 Xfinity Series Championship Race Picks

NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Betting Predictions
Date/Time: Saturday November 5th, 2022. 6:00PM (EST)
Where: Phoenix Raceway
TV: NBC

Late last night, the Camping World Truck Series delivered an insanely exciting season finale which was highlighted by an intense battle among the championship contenders all the way down to the checkered flag. In the end, Zane Smith won the Lucas Oil 150 becoming the first champion to be crowned this weekend among NASCAR’s top 3 divisions at Phoenix Raceway. On Saturday, NASCAR’s Xfinity Series will get the opportunity to have their championship moment in the Xfinity Series Championship which will be determined among a juggernaut group of talent which includes Noah Gragson, Ty Gibbs, Josh Berry, and Justin Allgaier.

Despite the fact JR Motorsports (JRM) will field 3 of the 4 cars in Saturday’s championship finale, Noah Gragson stands alone as the man to beat for the championship. Gragson has been strong throughout the entire year but caught fire during the 2nd half of the season with 5 wins in the last 9 races including a lucrative stretch of 4 straight wins in September. Perhaps more importantly to Saturday’s Xfinity Series Championship, Gragson also won the initial stop at Phoenix Raceway back in the spring by winning the United Rentals 200. In that race, Gragson dominated by leading 114 of 200 laps en route to his first victory at Phoenix. Therefore when you combine the win back in the spring with Gragson’s hot streak in recent weeks, everybody is chasing the #9 car going into Saturday.

While I believe Gragson is the deserving favorite this week, I would throw out a note of caution to bettors. As seen in last night’s Truck Series race, these single race championship finales can produce anything and everything. Ben Rhodes nearly won last night’s Lucas Oil 150 on a Hail Mary two-tire pit call and there were several late race restarts that were extremely dicey amongst the entire field. Just last week, we watched Ty Gibbs unnecessarily move his teammate in Brandon Jones on the last lap to win at Martinsville and something tells me we can see even bolder moves from the championship contenders on Saturday. Needless to say, nothing is guaranteed and bettors should come to terms with the volatility that accompanies the end of championship races.

Handicapping Quick Notes

• Unlike the Truck Series stat I shared yesterday, the Xfinity Series champion has won the final race in each of the last 4 championship finales
• Championship contender Justin Allgaier is a two-time winner at Phoenix which is the most among all active drivers. Brandon Jones and Daniel Hemric are the only other former winners in Saturday’s field
• For drivers with more than 2 career starts, Noah Gragson (103.8) and Brandon Jones (103.2) have the highest average driver ratings over the last 5 races
• Ty Gibbs has finished 2nd and 6th in two career starts at Phoenix
• AJ Allmendinger has a career best finish of 5th in 5 career starts at Phoenix
• Riley Herbst finished 4th in both races last year at Phoenix (crashed early in the spring)
• Sam Mayer has posted pedestrian results in both career starts at Phoenix with finishes of 22nd and 13th
• In the Xfinity Series, the race winner has started inside the top 5 in 29 of the last 32 races at Phoenix
• Since the championship finale moved to Phoenix, the last two season finales have produce caution totals of 10 and 8 which is far above the average (6.2) over the last 10 races at Phoenix

Note: All information above pertains to drivers with multiple starts at Phoenix to identify historical trends. For drivers without tenured experience at Phoenix, we will look for practice observations, similar track styles, and other performance metrics to identify potential drivers that could exceed expectations

Practice Observations

Xfinity Series’ teams and drivers had the rare opportunity for a full practice session Friday evening in preparation for Saturday’s Xfinity Series Championship. At the end of the session, Sammy Smith was on top of the leaderboard with a fast lap 131.128mph. While Smith does not have a lot of experience in the Xfinity Series, he has improved with each start this season and I would add the #18 car has looked really good with different drivers at tracks like New Hampshire and Richmond which draw some similarities to Phoenix. While single lap speeds are nothing to get carried away with, Smith looked pretty solid throughout the session as well which may mean our expectations for the youngster should be slightly elevated this week.

Aside from single lap speed, Smith’s teammate and the most controversial driver of the week by way of Ty Gibbs appeared to have the best overall speed. Gibbs posted the best overall race speed indicators with the fastest 10 and 15 lap consecutive averages. As I observed raw data times, Gibbs appeared to have the field beat by 1-2 tenths among the drivers with the same laps run/tire wear during practice. AJ Allmendinger and Noah Gragson were within striking range of those times but Gibbs clearly had the best speed from an observational standpoint. Other names that appeared to be fast included guys like Riley Herbst, Brandon Jones, Nicholas Sanchez, and Kyle Weatherman among the various different spectrums of the garage. Meanwhile, I was not impressed by the speed shown by Josh Berry, Daniel Hemric (defending winner), and Sam Mayer among the more popular names.

Betting Targets

Like all of the championship races this weekend, bettors are not going to find much value in win (futures) odds. The championship contenders’ betting odds are extremely saturated and perhaps for justifiable reasons because there is a strong correlation that these finales are often won by championship contenders. Going into Saturday’s finale, I don’t see that trend changing anytime soon. If I had to pick an outright winner, I am sticking with Noah Gragson as the guy to beat. I think the #9 team has been competing at championship level for months and I think they will be very tough to beat. While Ty Gibbs did look good in practice and will likely be in contention, I don’t think anyone will cut the #54 any breaks after last week’s madness. Therefore, I like Gragson to get the championship with a shout out to Justin Allgaier to be the spoiler based on how well he races at Phoenix and other similar layouts.

Specific to betting targets, I really like Brandon Jones as a pivot among the top guys. Jones got robbed on the last lap at Martinsville last week but could get a shot at redemption at one of his better tracks on Saturday. While the #19 is not in the playoffs, he still has the talent and the equipment to mix it up among the championship contenders. More importantly, Jones appears to have a higher ceiling than some of the other drivers in his range of betting odds. Other drivers that I believe have similar upside based on current betting odds include names like Riley Herbst, Nicholas Sanchez, and Ryan Sieg. Herbst has shown great potential at Phoenix with a pair of 4th place finishes last year. Sanchez has posted several quality finishes despite limited experience in recent weeks to elevate his H2H potential. Lastly, Sieg is a bottom-tier H2H option that has had some solid runs at Phoenix throughout his career. As a result, all of these drivers deserve H2H consideration with Herbst possibly offering lottery style dark horse appeal for the outright win.

Draftkings Xfinity Series Championship Optimal Lineup

2022 Xfinity Series Championship Race Picks

*Final*

Justin Allgaier +500 (1 unit)
Brandon Jones +1200 (.75 unit)
Riley Herbst +5000 (.5 unit)

H2H Match-ups and Props

Noah Gragson -110 over Ty Gibbs (2 units)
Brandon Jones -110 over Sam Mayer (2 units)
Sammy Smith -110 over Austin Hill (2 units)
Riley Herbst +500 finishes Top 5 (1 unit)