NASCAR at Bristol odds and predictons: Josh Berry’s future, two dirt specialists as long shots and more

1. You knew we had to start with Josh Berry. He came in a surprising second place last week, he was Top 10 in Phoenix, he’s on the dominating Hendrick team and he’s at 50-to-1 this week in Bristol. Is Josh Berry for real? If not, what does he have to show you for him to move up some tiers in the weekly rankings? And if so – what happens when Chase Elliott returns and Berry has proven to be really good at this?

Jeff: Berry is a talented short track racer and a good driver overall, but like any newcomer to the Cup Series, it will take him awhile to get up to speed. Very few drivers can arrive in Cup and be competitive right away. Berry was significantly off from his teammates at Richmond until a late strategy call worked out, for example. That said, it seems like he’s on a path for an eventual Cup ride. If Dale Earnhardt Jr. is able to secure a charter and take JR Motorsports to the Cup Series, his longtime friend Berry would be the first text.

Jordan: Berry has shined in his audition, getting improvement with each passing week and justifying the belief of many within the garage (including Earnhardt) that he can get the job done at the Cup level should he get the opportunity. Whether that opportunity will come or not is up in the air. Looking at the landscape and potential openings for next year, there isn’t a spot that makes a whole lot of sense to where Berry could run competitively. His best bet is for Earnhardt to either start up a Cup team or buy into one, and right now there isn’t a sense that’s on the horizon.

2. Kyle Larson got a win at Richmond and there was a cool anecdote in The Top 5 column this week where he said he had been flipping through old YouTube videos to remember how good he used to be. We talked last week a little about momentum; this week it’s confidence. Does this win set Larson’s mind straight and will lead to a series of victories now? Or does he still have issues with the Next Gen car that may give us pause?

Jeff: It’s not so much that Larson has issues with the Next Gen, but the parity-inducing car has made it more difficult for drivers to dominate. It used to be that the best drivers were in the best equipment, which created a winning combination. Now all the equipment is the same, in theory. The only difference for teams to figure out how to make their store-bought parts go fast instead of building the cars themselves. The “innovation” part of NASCAR has largely been neutered. So that’s a challenge for a driver like Larson – and any driver – because they have limited opportunities to break away from their competitors. When a driver goes from 10 wins to three the next season, it’s natural to question themselves – even if that can be blamed on the equipment and not the driver.

Jordan: No doubt, the introduction of the Next Gen car can be blamed for Larson coming back to Earth after a historic 2021 season. But as he’s acknowledged several times, he and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team also committed several uncharacteristic mistakes last year that took them out of contention. Thus far in 2023, Larson and company have avoided these type of mistakes and with a little luck, Richmond could’ve been this third of the season. This is a long winded way of saying, don’t be shocked is he starts stringing together some victories and begins to resemble the driver who steamrolled to the 2021 title.

3. The Truck Series race this week features a lot of NASCAR stars (Joey Logano, William Byron, Chase Briscoe). Can they just jump in and win a race on dirt in a truck pretty easily? They’re all listed among the favorites.

Jeff: For sure. I’d bet on a Cup driver to win the Truck race. Not only are those drivers in Cup for a reason, but they typically don’t jump into non-competitive cars for these one-off races. For example: Logano is running for ThorSport and Byron is reuniting with his old team at Kyle Busch Motorsports. Drivers in those trucks would be among the favorites anyway; the fact they’re Cup drivers only makes them more so.

Jordan: Absolutely. This happens regularly, and the expectation is that it will happen again in Saturday’s Truck Series.

4. Who’s a long shot we like this week at Bristol?

Jeff: I’ll give you two: Jonathan Davenport (+6600 and dropping quickly — check the live odds below) and Justin Haley (+8000), both of Kaulig Racing. People think “dirt race!” and go “Kyle Larson!” or another sprint car driver. But Cup Series cars don’t drive anything like sprint cars on dirt; the closest comparison is dirt late models (even though they’re still not quite the same). Well, who was the best dirt late model driver in the world last year? It was Davenport, also known as “Superman,” who topped an astounding $2 million in winnings while racing dirt late models. This will be his first Cup start (and we saw how that went for the likes of Jordan Taylor and Jenson Button at COTA), but if he somehow takes to the cars naturally, watch out. Then I’ll throw Haley in there because he had a very successful dirt late model week at Central Florida’s Volusia Speedway in February (winning three times).

Jordan: Only one driver has finished in the top five in both times NASCAR has competed on the Bristol dirt track, and that’s Joey Logano. And considering that Logano is listed at  +1200 on some boards, that’s pretty good value for a driver who’s shown he knows to run well here despite not having a background on dirt. Ricky Stenhouse at +2200 is another name to consider; he finished second in this race two years ago and has extensive experience racing on dirt. Stenhouse winning Sunday would not at all be surprising.

NOOB QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Hendrick Motorsports is dominating this year (they even got all their points back), but are we giving them too much credit and not enough spread around to, say, Chevrolet? Or even Jeff Gordon’s influence as VP? Or are they getting the appropriate amount of credit?

Jeff: Chevy’s new noses might give them a slight advantage over the field, but Hendrick is still finding consistently stellar speed in a way other Chevy teams (like Richard Childress Racing and Trackhouse) are not. They have a large collection of big brains over at Hendrick who spend their time finding every possible advantage to exploit for their drivers’ benefit. It’s hard to beat that group when they’ve figured something out.

Jordan: After Larson’s win at Richmond, Hendrick executive Jeff Andrews told The Athletic that the credit should go to Chevrolet, pointing out that both RCR and Trackhouse were also fielding fast cars. And while Andrews is correct Chevrolet is performing well across the board, he’s being too modest. The organization he oversees has a high level of consistency that’s unmatched by any other team, regardless of the manufacturer. At this point in the season, Hendrick is clearly the best team in the garage and it’s not even all that close.