There are a lot of unknowns heading into Sunday's Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway.
For example, how will the Next Gen car perform on a 1.333-mile concrete racetrack?
In addition, how will the new underbody scanner affect how teams are setting up their cars and finding speed?
On the flip-side, there is a 50-minute practice session for the NASCAR Cup Series on Saturday evening, so we should have a decent amount of data to analyze to help solve those questions above.
With this in mind, I'm taking a very conservative betting approach until cars hit the track this weekend.
Though, because there is so much uncertainty, locking in a plus-money featured matchup isn't a terrible strategy either.
NASCAR Pick for Nashville
*Odds as of Thursday morning
While Ross Chastain should be favored over Trackhouse Racing teammate Daniel Suarez, the -175 price is simply too large.
Chastain has carried the banner for Trackhouse for most of the season, but Suarez finally parlayed a fast car to a victory at Sonoma two weeks ago.
Considering they're teammates, they should have similar pace in their cars again on Sunday at Nashville, which, as I mentioned above, sports a concrete surface.
Dover, another concrete track, is arguably Suarez's best racetrack, so there is a path for the Cup Series' most recent winner to get up to speed quickly this weekend and potentially be even faster than his teammate.
Again, we don't have a lot of data to lean on and won't until Saturday's practice session, but that's also why +140 via BetMGM is a very bet-able number in the featured matchup.
The bet: Suarez +140 over Chastain
