Dr. Diandra: Three reasons to bet on a Ross Chastain win at Las Vegas

Ross Chastain has the best odds of his career for his first Cup Series win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, even if Kyle Busch is the favorite after last week’s Auto Club Speedway win.

Trackhouse Racing surprised everyone in 2022 with three wins in its first year as a two-car team. Chastain won at Circuit of the Americas and Talladega, while teammate Daniel Suárez won at Sonoma.

Wins at two road courses and a superspeedway are a good start, but true championship teams must contend at all kinds of tracks. I think this is the year Chastain shows his real potential — starting with the 1.5-mile intermediate tracks.

Chastain’s first win in any of NASCAR’s top three series was the 2018 Las Vegas Xfinity race. After wrangling three races in Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 42 car that season, Chastain qualified on the pole for the first and won the second.

In 2019, Chastain earned his first win in a truck at Kansas’ 1.5-mile oval. Chastain also won the 2022 Craftsman Truck Series race at Charlotte’s intermediate track.

In the 2022 Cup Series — the only year for which we have Next Gen data — Chastain ranks first among active full-time drivers in average finish at intermediate tracks. His 7.0 average finish position includes:

His worst finish, a 15th at Charlotte, was impacted by a late-race wreck.

As you can see from the graph below, Chastain’s average finish on 1.5-mile tracks is 1.7 positions better than Denny Hamlin, who has the next-best finishing average.

On a side note: Busch and Martin Truex Jr. had the fourth- and fifth-best averages at intermediate tracks, despite both drivers having disappointing 2022 seasons.

Chastain is one of the drivers who performed much better in the Next Gen car than in the Gen Six. The graph below shows