LifeLock.com 400 Race Preview

Chicagoland Speedway -- 07/10/2010

Author: Jed Henson

Published: Wednesday Jul 7 2010 9:53am

This week the series heads to Joliet, Ill., for a run on Chicagoland Speedway. Chicagoland is a 1.5-mile, d-shaped track with 18 degrees of banking in the turns. These stats place it squarely in the big-flat track category, along with the tracks at Michigan, California, Kansas, Pocono and Indianapolis. This means we have plenty of historical data at our disposal this week, and that alone improves this race's predictability quite a bit.

In addition, Weather.com says the Joliet area should receive clear, sunny skies Friday and Saturday, further bolstering predictability.

Finally, Chicagoland is not as big as Michigan, Pocono, etc., so it typically sees fewer races decided by fuel mileage than the giant flat tracks. At the same time, it remains big enough to produce fewer of the on-track accidents and pit-road incident that rear their head at many of the smaller tracks on the circuit.

So, all in all I rate predictability this week above average. Bettors can therefore find value in slightly weaker odds than normal.

Handicapping Chicagoland
I first examined the practice, qualifying and race data for all the big-flat track events in 2009 and 2010. Then I crunched the data for just the recent big-flat events, and I took the extra step of excluding the Indianapolis and Pocono data from that analysis because of all the big-flats, those two tracks are the least like Chicagoland. Finally, I crunched just the 2009 Chicagoland and Kansas data, plus the data from the Michigan race last month (Chicagoland and Kansas are very similar tracks, and although Michigan is bigger, it's pretty similar, too).

I melded the results from those three analysis to produce initial rankings, and then I tweaked those rankings with my impressions of who is trending up on the big-flats, and who is trending down.

Jimmie Johnson topped the list, but I'm bumping him down to the #2 spot because his wife is due to deliver their baby any day now, and that event could pull him away from his car on race day.

Here are my initial rankings:

1. Jeff Gordon
2. Jimmie Johnson
3. Denny Hamlin
4. Mark Martin
5. Clint Bowyer
6. Tony Stewart

Keep your eye on Stewart in practice and qualifying Friday. He typically does not show well in my data analysis because, for whatever reason, he tends to under-perform in practice and qualifying each week (i.e., he typically races much better than he practices and qualifies). So, the fact that he's showing up as high as #6 in my preliminary rankings suggests he will run very well this weekend.

Stay tuned for my update following practice and qualifying.

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User	Comment
Cherry	Did you guys see Danica tonight? she did ok, 23rd. I think shes realizing its really hard to drive them stock cars. hehe
Shorty	The bif looks strong in qualifying. What do you guys think?
Gripex	Great rundown, i love how you include the weather as a predictability factor. Should be interesting to watch Johnson with the birth of his baby coming near.