Zilisch is now a full-time Cup driver<\/a>, and that could make a big difference. COTA last year was Zilisch\u2019s Cup Series debut, and he got caught up in a Lap 1 incident \u2014 but was posting top-five lap times on his way back up through the field and climbed to 14th before getting into another crash. He\u2019s going to have much more confidence now and is teammates with SVG, so they have the same equipment. Everyone in NASCAR has been waiting to see if Zilisch and SVG will actually go head-to-head, as we saw in the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series last year on a couple of occasions. This will be the first answer to that question.<\/p>\nJordan:\u00a0SVG vs. Zilisch is going to be a treat to watch. We saw how spirited their battles were last year in O\u2019Reilly, and the expectation is that this will continue on Sundays. Buckle up. This will be fun.<\/p>\n
OK, let\u2019s do it: Who is your favorite to win on Sunday? No surprise that SVG is a considerable favorite, considering all you\u2019ve said. But he has yet to win a Cup Series race here\u2026 What\u2019s with that!?<\/p>\n
Jeff: It\u2019s true SVG is 0-for-2 at COTA. Last year, he led 23 laps but finished sixth as the battle came down to Bell and Kyle Busch. But after this race, SVG really found another gear in stock cars and became his incredibly dominant self \u2014 winning three road races by more than 10 seconds (including the Roval last fall by 15.1 seconds). This wasn\u2019t very helpful if you\u2019re looking to bet, so I\u2019ll drop a bet here I think could work for you: BetMGM has a matchup between Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain where Busch is +110, and he finished second last year.<\/p>\n
Jordan:\u00a0To quote Ric Flair, \u201cTo be the man, you have to beat the man.\u201d And right now, SVG is undoubtedly the man on road courses. Picking against him is unwise.<\/p>\n
Who is a long shot you like?<\/p>\n
Jeff: Some of the normal names I\u2019d pick here aren\u2019t really \u201clong shots,\u201d like Bowman (since he\u2019s never finished outside the top 10 here) or Ty Gibbs or Michael McDowell. Their odds are all mid-range. But a true \u201clong shot\u201d who could win is Daniel Suarez at +6000. He\u2019s never finished better than 24th at COTA, but he\u2019s clicking with his new team at Spire Motorsports and is a previous road race winner in the Next Gen car (Sonoma 2022). I\u2019m not saying he\u2019ll do it, but it\u2019s also not impossible.<\/p>\n
Jordan:\u00a0Chase Briscoe is someone who\u2019s getting overlooked, and he shouldn\u2019t be. He\u2019s very skilled on road courses, his crew chief, James Small, is a smart strategist, and his Joe Gibbs Racing team is elite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NASCAR Cup Series heads to one of America\u2019s most iconic race tracks this weekend: Circuit of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82,6452],"class_list":["post-505119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-sports-betting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}