With practice and qualifying completed for the Crayon 301 on Monday (noon ET, USA) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NHMS), there are plenty of interesting betting angles to take a look at.
One of my favorite angles is to look at the combination of speed and tire wear. With a different tire compound, and the low-downforce package, tire wear could be a bit higher than in years past at NHMS.
As such, I've put into use my trusty FLAGS metric to take a lap-by-lap look at practice speeds.
As a result, I've found one driver I absolutely love for the New Hampshire race, which was rained out on Sunday and then rescheduled for today, thanks to some advanced analytics.
Let's take a look at today's Crayon 301 pick.
NASCAR Odds, Picks for New Hampshire
The Toyota camp impressed in practice for the Crayon 301, with Martin Truex Jr. and Christopher Bell leading the way in their respective practice groups.
However, their rookie teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing and grandson of the team owner himself, Ty Gibbs, looked incredibly strong in practice for a plethora of reasons.
First, he placed eighth in my weighted FLAGS metric in practice.
Second, he did that with plenty of raw speed, clocking in the eighth-best 10-lap average.
Third, he did that despite going out in the slower practice group, as Group B was notably two- to three-tenths of a second slower on the early laps than the equivalently positioned drivers from Group A.
That means if we mentally adjust his pace upward, Gibbs was a borderline top-five driver in FLAGS.
Perhaps most importantly though is the last point from practice: Gibbs had the lowest falloff in the field. If we look at his five-lap average (30.65 seconds per lap) and his 20-lap average (30.772), that difference of 0.122 is actually less than the difference between teammate Christopher Bell's five-lap (30.478) and 15-lap (30.601) times (0.123). And that's with five extra laps of potential tire wear coming into play for Gibbs!
Truex himself saw a 0.114 difference just going from five to 10 consecutive lap averages.
In other words, >Gibbs displayed plenty of raw speed, with little falloff in practice compared to others, despite being in the slower practice group.
Gibb' odds for Monday's Crayon 301 are likely inflated a bit thanks to his dead-last starting position. But notably, he was on an absolute flier of a lap prior to the car stepping out and Gibbs having to catch the car by overdriving it a bit.
Gibbs' history at shorter flat track is also inspiring. His best non-drafting oval finish came at the 0.75-mile flat track at Richmond earlier this year. He has wins at Martinsville, Phoenix and Richmond in the Xfinity Series.
Topping it off, he led the most laps in his lone Xfinity New Hampshire start, prior to an issue relegating him to a 21st-place finish.
All signs point Gibbs' way, including my model that gives Gibbs about a 40% chance to finish inside the top 10.
As of this writing, Bet365, Barstool, and Caesars sportsbooks all have this line available. I also show multiple percent edge on a Gibbs top-five finish (+600) and top-three finish (+1200) positional bets if you want to get a bit riskier for Monday's race.
The Bet: Ty Gibbs Top-10 Finish (+200) | Bet to: +160
