After our three-race winning streak unceremoniously ended on the last lap at Talladega, we’ve gotten a bit cold. No worries — I’m here to pick some winners and bounce back. We’ll head to Darlington Raceway this weekend, where the Goodyear 400 is scheduled for Sunday, May 14 at 3 p.m. ET. Our expert will break down the betting odds to identify the top NASCAR bets for Darlington and make his predictions for this weekend’s action. Ross Chastain stands out as an interesting NASCAR bet early this week.
This season, I will handicap the opening outright odds for the NASCAR Cup Series early in the week, and I’ll post a prop article once those markets become available. Only of OddsShopper Insider Access will get access to my full betting card, but I will include most of it in articles and on our YouTube Channel.
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NASCAR Predictions for the Goodyear 400 at Darlington: Race Preview
How Useful Are Last Weekend’s Results from Kansas?
I think last weekend’s results will prove quite predictive for this weekend’s event at Darlington. These events were flipped in the scheduling order last year because of NASCAR’s desire to keep this event scheduled for Mother’s Day weekend, and five of the seven drivers to record a driver rating of 90 or higher at Darlington went on to do so at Kansas.
The results from last year’s race at Darlington were a bit skewed by on-track incidents. Ross Chastain, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch were all knocked out of the event early but all still scored driver ratings above 90. All three of them proceeded to bounce back for solid top-10 runs at Kansas one weekend later.
While some exceptions to this rule stand out — the Darlington winner (Joey Logano) and Kansas winner (Kurt Busch) didn’t run well at the other track, last weekend’s results should still prove quite useful because of the high levels of tire wear. Drivers had to manage their Goodyear tires carefully in that event, which they’ll also have to do on the rough surface of Darlington, so using Kansas as a comparator makes sense for more than just the driver rating correlation.
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