Last season it was Hendrick Motorsports winning five of the seven road courses races on the NASCAR Cup schedule with Kyle Larson winning his first three road races and Chase Elliott winning his only two races of the season and it's why both are the favorites to win this week at Caesars sportsbooks. Elliott is 9-to-2 to win Sunday’s Kwik Trip 250 at Road America and Larson is 5-to-1.
But neither of those road racers have won in the first two road races of 2022. It’s been Trackhouse Racing with Ross Chastain grabbing his first Cup win at COTA and also Daniel Suarez dominating at Sonoma for his first Cup win. That’s two first-time winners from the same team on tracks dominated by one organization the previous four years.
What changed?
KWIK TRIP 250 PICKS & PREDICTIONS
The answer all rests with the new NextGen car which debuted this season. All those winning set-up notes that Chase Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson put together that aided him in winning seven of 14 road races from 2018-2021 are no good anymore with the new car. Imagine winning half the road races entered as Elliott did for four seasons. His next road course win will tie Tony Stewart for second-most in NASCAR history and his ninth win will tie all-time NASCAR leader Jeff Gordon with nine.
Kyle Larson winning his first three road courses last season was because of having fast cars but also a set-up secret revealed to his team by Elliott’s team. Larson was decent on road courses in the past and could run a fast single lap, but his road skills were no where close to Elliott’s until joining Hendrick.
The NextGen car has flipped the table on just one elite team dominating. Trackhouse Racing found an edge on the road courses before the season and applied that edge to both cars. I don’t know what it is and they’re not sharing their secret, but two wins in two tries are almost as big of an edge as Hendrick had on the roads last season.
The NextGen has done its job of not making any team dominant. Parity was desired and that’s what we have aided by a tire that has a great chance of blowing up after 25 laps. In 17 races this season we’ve had 12 different winners with five drivers having two wins each. Elliott’s two wins this season have come on concrete tracks and Larson’s last win came in the second race of the season at Fontana. Elliott has gone winless in the last five road races.
It’s been a wild ride of parity which has made betting the races and winning tougher than ever but also offered several drivers the true possibility of winning weekly in the 25-to-1 or higher range. I like it when I win, but hate it when I lose directing my anger mostly at NASCAR’s new regime and agenda moving forward.
KWIK TRIP 250 BETTING RESOURCES
- Date: Sunday, July 3, 2022
- Venue: Road America
- Location: Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
- Distance: 250 miles
- Laps: 62
- Network-Time: USA - 3:00 p.m. ET
- Defending Champion: Chase Elliott
Let’s move on with Sunday’s race at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin which is a massive 14-turn, 4.048-mile layout with unique corners while turning both left and right. It’s a fast track with lots of long straightaways and a bunch of braking also required around the turns. It’s a new track for the series. Chase Elliott won last season, his last road course win, following the 1956 race won by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tim Flock.
Yes, that’s quite a gap between races, but now we're starting a new Fourth of July tradition and it sure looks like the crowd is having a blast in multiple areas of this track. We can still call this race the Firecracker, right?
After two road races, there is a lot of data for the teams to review to prep themselves for this week, things they did wrong, errors they made, wrong assumptions based on the old cars, and just being slower than others. The team I’ll pay attention to the most this week is Joe Gibbs Racing because they didn’t learn anything at COTA in March with all their drivers struggling at Sonoma last month. Saturday’s practice and qualifying should give a glimpse of their road racing progress.
But my first thought about Sunday’s race was why would I fool around with guesswork on road racing progress when I already know Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez has things figured out already. No guesswork is needed.
READ MORE HERE....TOP-5 FINISH PREDICTION ON VEGASINSIDER.COM
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