NASCAR Odds for Bristol: Best Early Pick for Saturday Night
Photo by Jay Biggerstaff/Getty Images. Pictured: NASCAR Cup Series driver Austin Dillon
The last night race of the year takes place on Saturday as the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Bristol Motor Speedway for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race (7:30 p.m. ET, USA).
Bristol is one of the most unique tracks on the Cup Series schedule. The bullring is just over a half-mile in length, is steeply-banked and has a concrete surface.
That makes track history extremely relevant as other tracks come in as mostly secondary comps rather than a primary correlated track to Bristol.
One driver, in particular, stands out for me when we look at his Bristol track history and compare it to the top-10 market.
NASCAR Pick for Bristol
*NASCAR odds as of Wednesday
Kyle Busch is fantastic at Bristol, where he's either finished inside the top five or 20th or worse in every start since 2014. Similarly, Busch's new teammate, Austin Dillon, has the same boom-or-bust tendency here.
Over the last 11 Bristol races, Dillon has either finished inside the top 15 (eight times) or was unable to complete the race with a DNF (three times).
In fact, extending this to his whole 16-race Bristol career, there's been only one race on the concrete in which Dillon didn't finish inside the top 15 when avoiding major issues.
That includes three top-10 finishes in those 16 starts. If that were his long-term career rate, it would equate to +433 as fair odds.
Instead, DraftKings is offering this at +800, providing plenty of room from his market value to what his career trend has been.
I also personally use the following tracks as secondary correlated tracks to Bristol: Dover, Homestead, Darlington and Richmond.
The first three are all steeply banked true (or near-true in Darlington's case) ovals that lend themselves to a similar driving style as Bristol.
In addition, both Dover and Richmond are tracks that change quite a bit throughout the race and have a high correlation in average running position with Bristol.
Dover and Richmond in particular led me last year to a 125-1 winner on Chris Buescher.
Thankfully for Dillon, he's been strong at these tracks, picking up four top-10 finishes in just 12 starts in the Next Gen car.
By also being able to rely on his teammate, who is one of the all-time best at Bristol, there's enough upside for me to back Dillon for a top-10 finish at 8-1 odds.
The Pick: Austin Dillon +800 | Bet to: +650
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