After another long season with plenty of storylines both on and off the racetrack, this weekend serves as the penultimate race to the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Throughout the year, teams have ebbed and flowed into grooves and slumps. And much like with any sport, whoever finds their stride at the right time certainly matters, but with NASCAR, location matters just as much.
This weekend’s race is, of course, at Phoenix Raceway, and that could bode well for one driver in particular.
Looking back at the early race at Phoenix this season, Toyota dominated from start to finish. Four of the top 10 finishers in the race were Toyota drivers, with Christopher Bell taking the win.
However, it isn’t Bell who’s racing for a championship this weekend.
Tyler Reddick, who finished 10th in the earlier race, comes into this one as Toyota’s lone shot at the grandest trophy of them all. Does Toyota’s spring dominance make him the odds-on favorite, though? Las Vegas says absolutely not. In fact, according to the oddsmakers, Reddick is the long shot.
Defending champion Ryan Blaney currently leads all of the Championship 4 drivers at +185. William Byron follows at +275, while Joey Logano sits narrowly in third at +300. Reddick’s long-shot championship odds currently sit at +330.
What’s the deal here, right? Reddick and company dominated the track earlier in the season, so it’d be fair to assume that the same thing could happen.
The issue with that logic warrants a complicated answer.
NASCAR seasons span the course of almost an entire year, and that race took place in March. Since then, the cars have been tweaked by NASCAR, its teams and everyone else under the sun. If Toyota showed up to this weekend’s race with the exact same car it raced in Phoenix, it probably wouldn’t even pass the safety inspection, much less win the race if it did.
Teams will show up to Phoenix this weekend with the culmination of a complete arsenal they’ve been building and tweaking all season long. It doesn’t matter if Toyota finished 1-5 at Phoenix in March, because when November hits, the cars race completely different than early in the season.
The cars being vastly different is not the only reason that Reddick can’t be the favorite here, though. There’s the numbers game to think about as well.
Ford is at a clear advantage with two drivers in the Championship 4, not to mention a win under its belt last week at…
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