Win Bets:
0.5* Joey Logano @ 10/1
0.5* Matt Kenseth @ 12/1
0.5* Denny Hamlin @ 25/1
0.5* Brian Vickers at 35/1
It's been several races now since we've had a nice double digit winner. I mean hell even The Dinger was 7.5/1 that day, but races at tracks like this tend to produce those kind of results. So with that I present to you four guys at 10/1 plus which more races than not is what I like to go with.
In the last two August races here, Logano has had very solid race cars and came home with 8th and 5th-place finishes. He led 139 of the 500 laps here two years ago. He has been pretty solid this weekend on the practice charts using them to make race runs and not qualifying set ups. Joey was 8th on the ten-lap average chart in Practice #1 and ranked 6th on that chart in Happy Hour. Momentum-wise, Logano is having a great run here lately with four straight finishes of 6th or better.
This weekend, the #20 team has been pretty quiet, but that?s not very surprising. In the first session, Kenseth was 15th-fastest on the speed chart and ranked 11th in ten-lap average. He ran 18 total laps in Happy Hour and ended up posting the 11th-best lap time after spending some time in race trim. This team needs a good run to maintain their points advantage to get into the Chase, and Bristol is the perfect place for them to do that. Here at Bristol he has seven top 10s in the last ten races, including his win in this event one year ago.
I've said it once and I?ll say it again: losing Grubb forever would be the best thing that happened to this #11 team. This will be the #11 team?s fourth race without their normal crew chief and I have no concerns about that at all. Hamlin now has five top 10s in the last six Cup races and it seems like nobody has noticed. He hasn?t always gotten the finishes he deserved but Hamlin has led 214 laps over the last four Bristol races and that shouldn?t be overlooked. The #11 Toyota was sporty in Practice #1 on Friday, coming in 2nd-fastest behind Kyle Larson but ranking just 13th out of 17 cars on the ten-lap average chart. In Happy Hour, Hamlin was 33rd on the speed chart, but that can be attributed to the fact that he used that session to focus on race trim, running 46 total laps. He was 7th in ten-lap average during that final practice. He won here in 2012 and has finished inside the top 10 in 47.1% of his 17 career starts.
In March of 2012, Vickers subbed for Mark Martin in the #55 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing and finished 5th after starting 25th. Later that year, in the second trip to August, VIckers started 22nd and finished 4th. Fluke runs you say? Not quite. VIckers is now on a five-race streak of top 10s here at Bristol while driving the #55 car, and it doesn?t matter where he starts: in this race last August, Brian started and finished 4th; this year in the March race, he started 38th and drove up to a 9th place finish. This weekend, he was 4th-fastest on the Practice #1 speed chart and ended up 7th-quickest in ten-lap average. In Happy Hour, the #55 Toyota was 28th on the speed chart, but they focused on race trim that session so the low ranking makes sense.
Still waiting on the darn matchups.
Dawg
