Hollywood Casino 400 Predictions: Top 5 Picks and Best Long Shots:
It wasn’t a really exciting Bristol race from an aesthetics standpoint, but the postrace melee between Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar, combined with pretty strong simulation results, made the Bass Pro Shops Night Race a satisfying one. Joey Logano picked up the win at 12-1, edging Kyle Larson by just over a second. With the recent success of those two drivers, they both moved into the top 4 in the season standings, along with Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. Larson leads Hamlin by one point, Logano by 16 points and Bell by 17 as we head to Kansas. The problem for Logano … he has struggled somewhat at Kansas, while the other three have thrived. In fact, those three top my initial simulation and are the three leading favorites on the odds board, according to DraftKings.
This will be the second race of the season at Kansas, with Tyler Reddick having won the first one back in April. At the time, it was part of a dominant run in which he won five of the first nine races. He has not visited Victory Lane since, however. Interestingly, with the initial simulation projecting the same three-car breakaway as in April (Hamlin, Bell, and Larson), we will eagerly await practice and qualifying results before investing too heavily. Just like Bristol, Kansas Speedway boasts a handicap-ability grade of B, making it reasonably predictable by statistical methods. P&Q on Saturday figures to jumble things up a bit, but I would expect one of those drivers to be the eventual favorite. Of note, Larson (twice) is the only one of the three who has won here over the past couple of years. He has three career Kansas wins, tying him with Hamlin for active driver honors. Reddick, Logano and Brad Keselowski have each won twice at this track.
Usually, pure speed gets it done at Kansas, and tracks similar to Kansas, but there can be some havoc here, like in April, which was a very clean race with just three caution flags and all 37 drivers finishing the race running, there were at least seven cautions in each of the prior 14 races, most of them being crashes. In fact, the last four races before April showed an average of 3.0 cars per race being eliminated in accidents.
My own track designation for Kansas is in a group called “Cookie Cutter Speedways,” based on the shape and the similarity to several other venues built around the late 1990s and early 2000s. It does get quite racy at this track at times, so the races can be quite thrilling. Perhaps the only other introductory tidbit you might want to consider regarding this week’s race is that, for the second time this season, it is following a race at Bristol on the schedule. Early forecasts call for temperatures in the mid-70s with rain mixed in through the weekend. Hopefully, that doesn’t affect the practice/qualifying session on Saturday morning, as both have been important lately. Practice is No. 2 on my ranking of simulation factors this week, and as far as qualifying goes, two of the last three winners have started from the pole. Furthermore, only two of the last 19 Kansas winners started outside the top 10.
Looking back closer at last week now, things were pretty solid for our final simulation at Bristol, even though we didn’t get the winner. Top 5 and top 10 projections were very strong and would have been even better had we not seen the Blaney-Hocevar dust-up. With that in mind, this is how the Bass Pro Shops Night Race affected our season numbers to date.
Initial Bristol simulation winner: Loser (-1 unit) – NOW -1.15 units for the season
Final Bristol Simulation winner: Loser (-1 unit) – NOW +31.05 units for the season (These are +87.85 units for the last two seasons!)
Final Bristol Simulation Top 2 drivers To Win: Two losers – total return -2 units – NOW +12.35 units for the season
Final Bristol Simulation Top 3 drivers To Win: Three Losers – total return -3 units – NOW +8.15 units for the season (Logano was projected fifth)
Final simulation top 3 Bristol projections: one winner, two losers – total return -1 units – NOW -4.3 units for the season
Final simulation top 5 Bristol projections: four winners, one losers – total return +5.95 units – Now -32.9 units for the season
We also scored seven top-10s and that brought back +1.7 units. If you recall, I discontinued recording those results last month when the top-10 odds went off our feed regularly. As a reminder, and I plan to stick with this in my logging of results next season — I NEVER wager anything with more than about -250 odds in NASCAR. I would venture to guess that of our -32.9 units on top-5 projections this season, at most of them would be removed by my -250 standard. There is simply too much that can go wrong in any given race that is outside each driver’s control to pay lofty prices like that. That is on ANY available wager. If you recall, our top-10 earnings lost over 25 units on one SVG projection back at Coronado in July. Simply DON’T DO IT! For instance, the top-10 prices on Larson, Hamlin, Gibbs and Blaney all exceeded -250 at Bristol. I would not have made these bets. At some point, maybe I’ll come up with the exact number of units won/lost for the wagers had I not reported these wagers won/lost over -250.
Now for my final personal picks, which are published each race day in the VSiN Email Newsletter…
Final simulation top 5 Bristol projections: two winners, three losers – total return -1.25 units – Now -52.95 units for the season
Top Bristol Longshots to win: four losers – total return -4 units – Now -16 units for the season
Favorites to struggle at Bristol: Byron (9th), Logano (1st), Berry (6th), Reddick (18th) – Now 82 for 117 for the season picking usual contending drivers to finish outside of the top 10.
I’m not sure many experts could have seen Logano’s first-place run coming at Bristol after his recent struggles at the track. That said, he was one of the biggest beneficiaries from practice and qualifying being rained out, as he started at least 10 spots better than normal. That was the first time this season I picked a driver to struggle and he won. That said, my favorites-to-struggle picks stunk. It was my overall worst performance of the season in that category.
Looking ahead to Kansas now for Sunday, I have dug out the stats for the four races that have been run at this cookie-cutter speedway oval over the last two calendar years. The top guys in most categories seem to be Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson, but the names of Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Tyler Reddick and Chase Elliott also come up often. … Remember, this is the second race at Kansas this season, and the weather conditions and starting time are very similar to what we saw in April. That should lend to teams that were successful in the Advent Health 400 using similar recipes this week, and teams that weren’t perhaps taking bigger swings at something different. With a handicap-ability grade of B, hopefully this is the week our winless streak ends, at least with the top 3 guys considered. That said, again, the top 3 simulation factors in order are 1) Recent momentum 2) How drivers fare at similar tracks to Kansas 3) Practice speeds. The drivers that would seem to benefit most from that recipe would be Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell, although Kyle Larson’s recent success here can’t be ignored.
Average STARTING POSITION last four races at Kansas
1. Ty Gibbs: 4.75
2. Kyle Larson: 4.75
3. Christopher Bell: 5
4. Tyler Reddick: 5.25
5. Denny Hamlin: 6.5
6. Chase Briscoe: 8.5
…
24. Ryan Preece: 24.5
25. Shane Van Gisbergen: 25
26. Todd Gilliland: 26.25
27. AJ Allmendinger: 26.67
28. Josh Berry: 27.5
29. Brad Keselowski: 28.5
Average PRACTICE SPEED RANK last four races at Kansas
1. Ty Gibbs: 7.5
2. Tyler Reddick: 8.75
3. Darrell Wallace: 9.75
4. Denny Hamlin: 11.75
5. Christopher Bell: 12.75
6. Kyle Larson: 13
…
24. Todd Gilliland: 25.25
25. Brad Keselowski: 25.5
26. Austin Dillon: 26
27. Shane Van Gisbergen: 26.33
28. Joey Logano: 29.75
29. Ryan Preece: 30.25
Average RUNNING POSITION last four races at Kansas
1. Christopher Bell: 4.5
2. Denny Hamlin: 8
3. Kyle Larson: 8.75
4. Chase Elliott: 9
5. Tyler Reddick: 10.25
6. Chris Buescher: 11.25
…
24. Austin Dillon: 23.5
25. Josh Berry: 24.75
26. Michael McDowell: 27
27. Shane Van Gisbergen: 27
28. Erik Jones: 27.5
29. AJ Allmendinger: 30.67
Average FASTEST LAPS last four races at Kansas
1. Denny Hamlin: 30.75
2. Kyle Larson: 28.75
3. Christopher Bell: 24.75
4. Tyler Reddick: 10.75
5. William Byron: 10.75
6. Ryan Blaney: 8.5
…
24. Todd Gilliland: 1.75
25. Michael McDowell: 1.75
26. Ricky Stenhouse: 0.75
27. Shane Van Gisbergen: 0.67
28. Noah Gragson: 0.5
29. Austin Dillon: 0.25
Average DRIVER RATING last four races at Kansas
1. Christopher Bell: 115.78
2. Denny Hamlin: 113.8
3. Kyle Larson: 107.28
4. Chase Elliott: 101.23
5. William Byron: 93.83
6. Ryan Blaney: 91.23
…
24. Ricky Stenhouse: 54.73
25. Austin Dillon: 52.78
26. Shane Van Gisbergen: 49.1
27. Erik Jones: 47.03
28. Michael McDowell: 46.9
29. AJ Allmendinger: 46.03
Most AVG LAPS RUN in TOP 15 last four races at Kansas
1. Christopher Bell: 255.75
2. Chase Elliott: 232.75
3. Denny Hamlin: 231.75
4. Chris Buescher: 222.25
5. Alex Bowman: 211.25
6. Kyle Larson: 209.25
…
24. Noah Gragson: 27.75
25. Todd Gilliland: 26.25
26. Shane Van Gisbergen: 22
27. Austin Dillon: 17.25
28. Erik Jones: 10
29. Michael McDowell: 6.5
Best AVERAGE FINISH last four races at Kansas
1. Christopher Bell: 255.75
2. Chase Elliott: 232.75
3. Kyle Larson: 209.25
4. Chase Briscoe: 167.25
5. William Byron: 157.75
6. Chris Buescher: 222.25
…
24. Carson Hocevar: 201.75
25. Michael McDowell: 6.5
26. Ricky Stenhouse: 47.25
27. Josh Berry: 62
28. Erik Jones: 10
29. AJ Allmendinger: 39.67
As you look at these stats, there are a couple of key things to point out. First, it looks like this track has been dominated by the Hendrick and Joe Gibbs teams in recent years. In fact, there is very little mention of anyone from Team Penske. If you’ve been looking at these numbers closely in the recent weeks, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano have been fixtures at the top of these stat categories. Consider this when you analyze the prices this week.
With all the above stats in mind, my top-rated drivers at Kansas, in order, are Hamlin, Bell, Elliott, Larson, Blaney. For track designation, the order is Hamlin, Bell, Larson, Briscoe, Byron. In terms of recent ratings, the top 5 are Logano, Blaney, Bell, Larson, Briscoe. All of it goes into the making of my initial simulation, which can be seen now on the NASCAR HUB at VSiN.com.
The final simulation will be made available Saturday afternoon after practice and qualifying, which is set for 10:30 a.m. ET. Remember, qualifying and practice have been fairly crucial lately at Kansas, so things could change, even at the top. That said, having to make my predictions at this point (which could change a bit after P&Q), I would go with the following:
Top 5: Bell, Larson, Hamlin, Gibbs, Elliott
Top underdogs to consider (+1200 or more): Briscoe, Wallace, Elliott, Beuscher
Favorites to struggle: Logano, Hocever, Bowman, Chastain
The 267-lap event at Kansas is set for 3 p.m. ET on Sunday.
Be sure to visit VSiN.com for this week’s full INITIAL SIMULATION. This is where you’ll find the sims all season long. While there you can click on driver links for season stats and recent results, plus get current odds, and much, much more.
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