Last Sunday, Martin Truex Jr picked up his first win of the season at Phoenix Raceway after capitalizing on a late-race restart. The victory extended the Cup Series’ streak to new winners throughout the 2021 campaign. Through 5 races, NASCAR’s top division has produced five different winners as the competition proves to be as fierce as ever before. This week racing festivities, for all touring series, move to Atlanta Motor Speedway which will culminate in Sunday’s main event in the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500.
Despite several different winners and tremendous parity in the Cup Series, our weekly race picks have been profitable in recent weeks mainly due to strong H2H match-ups and prop options. For Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta, I am expecting another similar event where sharp value will most likely be found in the realm of match-ups. Atlanta Motor Speedway is a 1.5-mile cookie-cutter layout which is very similar to Charlotte and Texas. The biggest difference for Atlanta is the track’s surface is extremely abrasive due to the surface age of the track, which dates back to 1997. Lap times will fall off significantly in the range of 3-4 seconds due to egregious tire wear, which puts a tremendous emphasis towards long-run speed to have success.
In recent years, Kevin Harvick has been the most dominant driver at Atlanta. Harvick has won two of the last three races at Atlanta, including last year’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500. In total, Harvick is tied with Kurt Busch for the most wins (3) among active drivers. Meanwhile, Kyle Busch (2), Brad Keselowski (2), and Denny Hamlin (1) are the only other drivers in the field to have found victory lane previously at Atlanta. While Harvick will likely be the overall favorite again this week, I don’t feel very confident in the performance from the Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) cars at this time. Last week, Harvick was never a factor at Phoenix despite having the most wins (9) in the history of Phoenix Raceway. Harvick finished with a modest 6th place result but was never a factor to contend for the victory. Additionally, if you look back to the last 1.5-mile track the Cup Series visited at Las Vegas, SHR cars struggled immensely, which leads me to believe they are in desperate need to find speed.
For those reasons and more, I believe Brad Keselowski should be the sharp favorite this week. Outside of Denny Hamlin, Keselowski and the #2 team have shown the most consistent speed this season among the frontrunners with three top 5 finishes in the last four starts. More importantly, Keselowski has been excellent at Atlanta in recent years, with both of his victories coming in the last four races. Keselowski is one of those drivers that performs well on the low-grip/high tire wear surfaces, and based on the speed witnessed thus far in the season, I don’t believe he should be the clear favorite this Sunday. While Keselowski would fit into the trend of new winners this season, I would also mention last week’s winner in Martin Truex Jr has a solid opportunity to snap that trend. Truex is likely the best driver in the series on long-run setups and has really solid results at Atlanta averaging a 7.5 place finish over the last ten races, which ranks 3rd among active drivers.
Obviously, either of the above options are not going to provide tremendous betting value this week as both Keselowski and Truex are listed among the outright favorites. If you want to consider a live dark horse for this Sunday’s race at much better odds, I would suggest looking at Kurt Busch as a target in all betting formats. The elder Busch is tied with Harvick for the most wins (3) among active drivers at Atlanta, and while many may point to the fact Busch has not won at Atlanta since 2010; I would point out that Kurt has finished 8th or better in 9 of the last 11 starts at Atlanta which includes five different top 5 finishes. For a guy that is not traditionally listed in the upper echelon of betting odds every week, we will likely not find better underdog or H2H value this week if Busch can keep those trends alive!
