2 #8 Kyle Busch (8/1) - He has three wins this season and one of them at Fontana, Michigan’s 2-mile sister track, stands up to be my first exhibit that he can win here this week. He has nine top-fives in 32 Cup starts at Michigan, but just one win back in 2011. He was in an accident last season and finished 36th, but he had nine straight top-10s there before the wreck.
3 #11 Denny Hamlin (13/2) - In 32 Cup starts at Michigan he has 11 top-fives, two wins, and 262 laps led. But his two wins came in 2010 and 2011. However, he’s been fast at Michigan in his last seven races leading laps in all seven and he’s been sixth or better in his last five. He’s knocking on the Micgan door for a win, and I have a feeling he expects to win there soon.
“I’m excited for Michigan,” Hamlin said. “Chris (crew chief Gabehart) has been telling me for weeks that we’re finally going to be able to get a win at Michigan together. We’ve had the fastest car, one of the most dominant cars there for the last handful of years. Typically, any time we are good at a track, we can tweak it a little bit to get better but the competition is also going to get better. We better be on our game, but I like our chances. It has historically been a good track for me and Chris.”
4 #19 Martin Truex Jr (7/1) - In 32 Cup starts at Michigan he has a 13.5 average finish. No wins yet, but he has 10 top-fives and he’s currently on a run of having six top-fives in his last 10 starts in 2023. He talked about his recent success this season.
“It’s so important to execute in the race these days with how close the field is and how hard it is to pass at certain tracks,” Truex said. “You have to do everything right. You have to do all of the little things right. We’ve been able to do that pretty well the last couple of months, for the most part, but really feel good about what we’ve done all year as far as the speed of our cars, and how we’ve able to race. I feel like we’ve had winning cars three or four races this year, already, and we’ve been leading a lot of laps and running up front each week. It was nice to get three of them (wins), but we would like to have more, so we will keep working on it.”
5 #1 Ross Chastain (17/1) - He had his best career finish in this race last year with 24th place. But he did lead the first laps of his Michigan career there, leading 29 laps. Between poor qualifying and poor races, you wouldn’t think I like him this week, but he was third at Fontana in February leading a race-high 91 laps.
6 #5 Kyle Larson (7/1) - From the fall of 2016 to 2017, he won three straight Cup races at Michigan when he drive for Chip Ganassi. He was the driver of the last non-Ford to win at Michigan. He is the king of the rim-riders running the high line and keeping his tires fresh for late in a run. Less movement on a run saves tires. I like him to run well here, but I’m still puzzled at what happened last week at Richmond.
7 #24 William Byron (8/1) - In eight Cup starts at Michigan he has a 14th-place average finish but his last five have been his best which includes a runner-up in 2021. He was 12th last season. He leads the series with four wins this season and this track might be win No. 5.
8 #4 Kevin Harvick (9/1) - He won this race last season. He’s won five of the last seven Michigan races. He has six wins overall on the wide 2-mile layout. And this is his last race ever at Michigan. He drives for Ford who has won the last eight Cup races at Michigan. Everything is there to say he wins again. But in the back of my mind, I know I haven’t seen the signs to trigger me to feel confident about a Michigan win by Harvick. Maybe I’ll see it during Saturday’s practice and qualifying, but I need some kind of a sign.
9 #45 Tyler Reddick (12/1) - He hasn’t had much success at Michigan with a best of 18th in his rookie season, but his style of rim-riding up high on these types of tracks does give him an edge that just hasn’t been recorded yet at Michigan for him other than an Xfinity Series win in 2019. I like how he ran at Pocono with second place and fifth at Charlotte, two tracks that require lots of horsepower as Michigan does.
10 #22 Joey Logano (14/1) - Every few seasons, he comes up with a Michigan win. His last win there was in 2019, then before that it was in 2016, and before that, it was in 2013. His next week should be soon. Maybe it’s Sunday. He was fourth last season, one of his eight career top-fives.
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