The final race of Motorsports Christmas is a long one — 600 miles. If you have made it through the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indy 500, there is still one more to go. Pace yourself on Sunday with your bets and with the other stuff. As always, trust the spreadsheet but also trust your eyes. Here are the best bets for the NASCAR Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, which gets underway Sunday, May 29 at 6 p.m. ET.
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Coca-Cola 600 Strategy
This crown jewel event should be won by the best driver with the best car and team. Picking a driver with longer odds in a 600-mile race seems foolish. Normally, that would be the case, but the 2022 season has been anything but normal. Goodyear’s new tire for the Next Gen car is having an embarrassing debut. Random tire failures are striking any driver at any time. This cannot be discounted. Every practice and race are littered with tire failures that take out contenders and reset the field with cautions.
In the All-Star Race at Texas, the drivers of the two fastest cars — Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson — both suffered race-ending tire failures. A week earlier at Kansas, several drivers suffered tire failures in practice and Chase Elliott’s day came to a sudden and violent end when his tire gave way. It’s going to be hot in Charlotte on Sunday, and the Memorial Day Weekend Race is no stranger to tire problems. There were 16 cautions in 2019. A 600-mile race with a suspect tire returns this race to its roots — it is an attrition race not a battle of the best.
Coca-Cola 600 Race Winner
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. +5000
This is impractical. It feels like the bet one would make after partying all day and losing money on the Monaco GP and Indy 500. It is that bet. Hitting a +5000 wager will do little to mitigate the mess of hot dogs and beverages in your stomach, but it will surely get you ahead or at least square you up.
How does this work? Tires. First, we need “Wrecky Spinhouse” to keep his tires in tact. Second, we need the 2022 tires to work their magic on everyone else. The second ask is easy and the first has been coming through lately. After a terrible start to the season, Stenhouse has stabilized as the schedule has normalized. In the last three races, he has three top-10 finishes. For the most part, each of those races were at intermediate tracks. Stenhouse finished second at Dover (similar car setup to Charlotte), eighth at Darlington (high tire wear track) and eighth at Kansas (moderate tire wear and a pure intermediate track). Finally, Charlotte has been kind to Stenhouse. He has a top-15 finish in six of the last seven races and two top-5 finishes (the top 5s were in the high-downforce package, but a top-5 finish in a 600-mile race is noteworthy regardless of the racing package).
Coca-Cola 600 Race Winner
Bubba Wallace +7000
The JGR Toyotas and 23XI Toyotas must have tightened up their alliance. Or, Denny Hamlin stopped caring and is sharing everything. How else could you explain Kurt Busch’s win and Bubba’s top-10 finish at a Kansas?
Like Stenhouse, this is a stretch. However, if Bubba can survive until the end, all bets are off. The favorites can suffer tire failures or get dumped on a late race restart, and they pay much less. The favorites make sense if this is a race filled with long green-flag runs where skill and speed separate the competition. Nothing this season indicates that this will be the case. There are different winners every week. It’s not quite Mario Kart, but it’s been close to banana peels and red turtle shells at times.
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Group B Winner
William Byron +240
Let’s look at his competition. Denny Hamlin has a fast car, but the No. 11 team has been mistake prone this season. Asking for 600 clean miles in the Memorial Day race is too much from Hamlin’s team. Tyler Reddick has dealt with tire issues all season, and there’s no sign that his team is prepared for 400 laps at Charlotte. Ryan Blaney is coming off a $1 million win, but all of his competition wrecked out and Texas is a full throttle track that suits his driving style. Other than that, Blaney has not been relevant lately.
Byron has not been perfect either, but he’s been close and has the stats to back it up. His 0.84 Real Rating (a statistic that comprehensively synthesizes all of a driver’s 2022 laps) is the best in NASCAR. At Kansas, Byron worked his way to the front and was leading the race in Stage 2 before the tire monster reared its ugly head. The racing package is different this season, but Byron proved last May that he can compete in this race by finishing fourth.
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All betting odds provided by DraftKings Sportsbook and all odds subject to change.
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