Editor's note: NASCAR's Alsco Uniforms 500 was postponed until Thursday night (7 p.m. ET, FS1) due to rain.
With Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell and Cole Custer all graduating from NASCAR's XFINITY Series, the 2020 Cup season includes a loaded rookie class.
Throw in the surprising John Hunter Nemechek and the Rookie of the Year battle is sure to rage on throughout the entire season.
Two of these rookies — Bell and Custer — are paired against each other in a driver matchup for tonight's Alsco Uniforms 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, with each driver -115 to finish ahead of the other.
From a high level, these odds make sense based on how they finished in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600, also at Charlotte.
However, with a little digging, we find that one driver has a clear advantage over the other, making the -115 price a nice value.
Odds as of Thursday at 2 p.m. ET and via PointsBet, where you can get a $200 sign-up bonus.
NASCAR at Charlotte Driver Matchup Betting Pick
As mentioned above, Bell finished ninth and Custer 12th on Sunday night, suggesting that these two performed similarly in the Coca-Cola 600.
Let's compare the two using metrics like average running position, driver rating and quality passes from Sunday's race at Charlotte.
Quality passes measures how many times a driver passes another car in the top 15 during green flag conditions.
As you can surmise, for a driver to run, on average, in 22nd place throughout a race and pass just six top-15 cars, yet somehow manage a finish of 12th tells you that Custer's result vastly overperformed his actual race speed.
To put Custer's quality passes number in perspective, Chris Buescher's 35 were the second fewest to Cole's six among all drivers that finished in the top 15.
This tells us that while Bell was mixing it up with (and passing) cars in the top 15 throughout the race, Custer barely passed any and his finish is more due to luck/strategy than speed.
As I've mentioned many times, we as bettors cannot handicap factors like luck and in-race strategy, however, we can project speed.
Bell was easily the faster driver on Sunday night, and considering tonight's race is at the same racetrack and under very similar conditions (same tire, night race, etc.) there's no reason to believe he won't be faster once again.
The bet: Christopher Bell (-115) over Cole Custer
[Bet now at PointsBet. NJ and IN only.]
