So far we've seen NASCAR's Next Gen car on a short track, a superspeedway and a 2-mile oval, and this weekend it'll get its first taste of a 1.5-mile track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
There's still plenty of uncertainty regarding which drivers will be fast in Sunday's Pennzoil 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX), but we at least have some data, little as it might be, to lean on in this race.
Remember, we do have practice and qualifying again this weekend which should help inform our final betting decisions, but if you're looking to get down early on one of Las Vegas' featured driver matchups, Austin Dillon vs. Kurt Busch is my favorite of the bunch.
NASCAR Picks & Predictions for Las Vegas
*Odds as of Tuesday afternoon
Oddsmakers did a nice job with the featured matchups for the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas as there's not much to love at this point in the week.
However, as I mentioned above, Dillon (+100) over Busch is my favorite of the four right now.
While the correlation between Auto Club Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway isn't great, they're both high-speed tracks that can provide some interesting nuggets.
First, Dillon bested Busch in green flag speed with No. 3 Chevy ranking 19th to the No. 45 Toyota's 23rd-fastest ranking. I know, that's very close, but if we focus on just early-run speed, the gap widens.
Dillon finished as 13th-fastest car in early-run speed at Auto Club, while Busch checked in at 20th place.
The reason this metric is important is because the tire wear at Auto Club is much more significant than what drivers will experience at Las Vegas, so we want to know which cars were fastest on fresher tires and not older, worn-out rubber.
And finally, the Chevys were just much faster than the Toyotas last week, highlighted by Dillon's teammate Tyler Reddick leading the most laps and running the most fast laps, while fellow Chevy driver Erik Jones was the fastest on early runs and in average green flag speed.
The edge here isn't huge by any means, but these odds are flip-flopped, so I lean toward Dillon +100 over Busch, which is currently available at BetMGM.
