Not a fan of Saturday Night racing unless it's Bristol, but I have to get some action.
Win Bets:
0.5 Jimmie Johnson @ 14/1
0.5* Clint Bowyer @ 17.5/1
Matchups:
2* Dale Jr +115 over Denny Hamlin
2* Jamie McMurray +110 over Ryan Newman
2* Greg Biffle +105 over Brian Vickers
1* Jimmie Johnson +100 over Joey Logano
1* Jimmie Johnson +160 over Brad Keselowski
1* Kyle Larson +105 over Dale Jr.
1* Jeff Gordon +100 over Brad Keselowski
This is the time of year that Jimmie Johnson turns into a top 5 threat week in and week out. With his 4th-place finish at Atlanta last weekend, ?Six Time? now has back-to-back top 5s in Sprint Cup action and is on a three-race streak of top 10s. Any ?slump? this #48 team was in last month is over. He picked it up in Happy Hour, though, posting the 3rd-best ten-lap and fifteen-lap averages.
Richmond has been a good race track for Bowyer over the years, as he?s collected two victories and owns a 12.0 average finish over 17 career starts. He?s also started inside the top 5 in seven of the last eight races here?make that eight of the last nine now?so he definitely knows how to get around this place.
Junior posted the 2nd-best ten-lap average during the first practice session on Friday, which I like because I feel like that was when the track was most similar to what we will see on Saturday night. Junior has been consistently good here at Richmond as of late and even finished 7th here in April?s event.
These Joe Gibbs Racing teams, I tell ?ya? They?re all searching for speed, as none of them looked good on Friday. In practice Denny fared: 16th in ten-lap average in Practice #1 with the 15th-fastest lap and then 19th on the overall speed chart in Happy Hour.
This #1 team has put together a good string of runs here as of late, with the 4th-best average finish in the series over the last six races (12.5). Jamie hasn?t finished worse than 14th since Indianapolis in July, where he ended up 20th. The #1 Chevrolet was 8th on the speed chart in Practice #1 and had the 3rd-best ten-lap average during that session as well. Then, in Happy Hour, Jamie posted the 4th-fastest lap while in qualifying trim. Like I said, he has speed this weekend, and now he just needs to bring it home.
Newman has to finish 41st to lock himself into the Chase, so from that aspect I can see where the #31 team would be conservative?at least to start the race. In Practice #1, Ryan as 19th on the ten-lap average chart and posted the 10th-fastest overall lap. In Happy Hour, he ranked 10th and 11th on those charts, respectively.
Biffle was 11th-fastest in Practice #1 on Friday morning and ended up 10th-fastest overall in Happy Hour. What I liked about him most coming into this weekend was his momentum; only Joey Logano and Kevin Harvick have better average finishes than Biffle over the last six Sprint Cup races. This team practiced in race trim to start out Happy Hour on Friday and Biffle said the car was ?really good.? I like when drivers don?t have many bad things to say about their car on a race weekend.
To me Brian Vickers is an also ran and I have him finishing around 20th.
Dawg
