TRACK: Charlotte Motor Speedway (1.5-mile Oval) DISTANCE: 208 Laps – STAGE 1 (Lap 55, STAGE 2 (60 Laps), FINAL STAGE 93 LAPS (312 Miles)
WEATHER: RAIN 50%, low 70s

Betting favorites

Kyle Busch (+600)

Busch has four Top-5 finishes in his last five starts of the season. Also, in his last six Charlotte oval starts, he’s scored five top six finishes including three of his last five being a top three result. He won the ‘600 in 2018 and has led one lap, 63 laps, 22 laps, 377 laps and 79 laps respectively in his last six Charlotte oval starts. He was fourth on Sunday night.

Martin Truex Jr. (+500)

Again, why not here? Truex showed promise in Darlington, but Charlotte is his best track. He’s won two of the last four Coke 600’s and was second in one of the other. In fact, he has seven top five finishes in his last nine oval starts at Charlotte. He led 116 laps in his win a year ago. He’s dominated Charlotte’s oval lately anyways with laps led of 131, 0, 392, 0, 233, 91, 0, 116 and 87 in his last nine starts there.

Chase Elliott (+600)

This has actually been a really good start to the year for Elliot. While he hasn’t won, he’s had the speed to compete for victories. At Charlotte, Elliott has three top four finishes in his last four tries including a runner-up on Sunday. If circumstances went his way, he’d have won the last two races on the season too.

Alex Bowman (+800)

Bowman, has arguably had the second best speed in all of NASCAR in 2020. He finished ninth in the ‘600 in 2018, seventh last year and 19th on Sunday night. He led a race high in laps on Sunday night but faded in dirty air in the end.

Jimmie Johnson (+900)

Johnson has had a much better start to the season. The speed is there again. Also, at one point, Charlotte was Johnson’s playground. Since 2016, while he’s struggled at virtually every race track, this 1.5-mile oval wasn’t one of them. He was third, first, 17th, seventh, fifth, eighth and second over his last seven Charlotte starts.

William Byron (+2,000)

Hendrick Motorsports has every other driver on here, why not Byron? He was ninth in last year’s ‘600 and in the top six before a cut tire at the end of Sunday’s race. He should have the speed to compete.

Erik Jones (+2000)

He had a fast car on Sunday night and that comes after a fifth place finish last Wednesday Doo.

Tyler Reddick (+4,000)

The rookie qualified fifth, ran in the top 10 and restarted fourth on the overtime restart. Go for him for these odds.

Austin Dillon (+8,000)

He won the ‘600 in 2017. He qualified sixth for Sunday and was in the top 10 all night. The 15th place finish isn’t indicative on how good of a car that he had. Now, he has a good starting spot for Wednesday too.

Alsco 500 Preview

This race is vastly shorter than the one run on Sunday. In fact, it’s virtually half the race (600 miles vs. 312 miles). While the conditions should be similar and the drivers having 600 miles of practice this past weekend, Wednesday night’s race is still going to be very different.

Think about it. We don’t have qualifying. The stages are obviously way shorter, so this makes it like it like a sprint race like the one we saw last Wednesday night in Darlington. When the green flag drops, it has to be go time.

The problem is, the race track isn’t going to be any different than it was on Sunday though. A single groove race track that promotes clean air.

Does that lead to not as much of a dominating race like we’ve seen at Charlotte in the past. The ‘600 has seen a lot of dominance lately. Martin Truex Jr. led 392 of 400 laps in his 2016 win. Kyle Busch followed that up with leading 377 of 400 laps in 2018 only for Truex to lead 116 laps in his win a year ago. Over the last 11 Charlotte oval races, the eventual race winner led at least 91 laps in eight of them with six of those eight leading at least 115 laps. If someone leads over 91 laps on Wednesday, they would have stole the show. It’s entirely possible too under this racing package.

Then, how much do the cars change from Sunday to Wednesday? We saw in Darlington, track position was crucial because the handling was vastly different. Darlington went from a day race to night. Both of these races are under the lights. Does anything other than a shorter race change the outcome?

“When we unloaded here tonight, it was so loose I could barely hang onto it,” Busch said of Darlington 2 in comparison to Darlington 1. “Today it seemed like the track was a bit looser.  I know we came with a little bit different setup because we were kind of off here on Sunday.  But we started the race really far off on the other side of the fence today.  We were tight on Sunday, really loose today.  We had to tighten up and get it back to somewhat of a middle ground I guess from the two races.”

The first Darlington winner in Kevin Harvick did finish third on Wednesday, but his car was nothing like it was in the first race despite being the exact same race car again a few days later.

“Temperature is just a huge difference for our cars,” Harvick said. “Obviously with the rain all day, the low temperatures, it just affects the cars differently. It affected ours with the front tire not turning, the way the car traveled when it hit the ground off of turn two.  We never could get the balance of the car like we had on Sunday with where the car was tonight.

“That was magnified, starting 20th, in traffic.  Every time we’d restart on the bottom, we’d lose four or five spots.  We were very slow gaining the track position to get a better handling car till the end of the race.

“It was a battle.  Definitely different tonight than it was Sunday.”

Now, the top finishers from Sunday are coming from midpack due to the inverted field. Can they pass quick enough to make their ways to the front? Pit strategy is going to be key as two tire stops were the way to go on Sunday. Now that the playbook is written about how “magic” clean air is, everyone is going to be jockeying for positions for it.

Team Penske put two cars in the top three on Sunday night but they lacked the overall speed though. JGR and Hendrick left the door open for the taking. The odds of a repeat performance from Penske isn’t likely. I can’t see JGR or HMS leaving the trophy behind again.

Logano may have finished runner-up a year ago but that’s his only top five over his last six Charlotte oval starts. Actually, four of his last six Charlotte oval starts have resulted in a finish of 21st or worse.

His teammate Keselowski was fourth in 2018 and won on Sunday, but has three of his last five finishes being 39th, 15th and 19th respectively too.

That leaves Blaney. Sunday was his first top five finish in nine career Charlotte oval starts and was 13th or worse in seven of those nine tries.

The win though was the first for Ford since 2002 there. Toyota’s had won two in-a-row and four of the last five, all in dominating fashion. They only led 87 laps on Sunday night.

Stat To Watch

Starting position hasn’t mattered much in Charlotte still. Four of the last six race winners have come from a starting spot outside of the top 10 including three of the last five coming from Row 7 or worst. But, with an invert now, can the top speed cars from Sunday come through? Maybe they won’t have to.

Alex Bowman led the most laps (164) and will now start second. William Byron was in the top 10 all day and now starts on the pole.

They Said It

“Yeah, this week’s been pretty unfortunate,” Chase Elliott said following Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600. “We’ve had some tough losses in my career, for however many years I’ve been doing this, five, six years, unfortunately. It is what it is.”