10 Drivers With Best Odds To Win NASCAR Cup Series Race At Iowa

The NASCAR Cup Series returns to Iowa Speedway for just the second time in series history. Last year’s winner, Ryan Blaney, is among the favorites to take home the checkered flag yet again. But we’re counting down the drivers with the best odds to find their way to victory lane.

Ryan Blaney started on the front row and led 201 of a possible 350 laps en route to a dominant victory in the first NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway a year ago.

This year, Blaney returns as just one of a slew of favorites to take home the checkered flag. We’re counting down the drivers with the best odds to find victory lane on Sunday, including some you may not expect.

T10) Ross Chastain and Chris Buescher - +2000

Iowa represents a pair of different opportunities for drivers Ross Chastain and Chris Buescher.

For Chastain, it’s a chance to get back on track. Three straight finishes outside the top 20, including two outside the top 30, saw him fall out of our most recent power rankings.

Meanwhile, Buescher’s playoff hopes became a bit more precarious with Bubba Wallace’s win at the Brickyard 400 a week ago.

Neither driver finished inside the top 10 at Iowa a year ago, but they’ve both shown speed in the past at flat, 1-mile ovals such as New Hampshire and St. Louis.

T8) Tyler Reddick - +1800

If you’d told most fans that Bubba Wallace would’ve won a race this season before 23XI Racing teammate Tyler Reddick, they would’ve guessed Wallace won at either Daytona or Atlanta early in the season.

Instead, it’s August and Reddick is still without a victory. While his playoff spot seems secure due to his sixth-place spot in the points, that could change if we get a new winner in Iowa.

Reddick struggled at this track a year ago, finishing 22nd and scoring no stage points despite an eighth-place qualifying position.

T8) Chase Briscoe - +1800

Unlike Reddick, Chase Briscoe is locked into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs and he continued his hot summer by winning the first stage at last week’s Brickyard 400.

Briscoe didn’t run well last year at Iowa, finishing 28th after starting sixth, but like Buescher and Chastain, he has a history of success on tracks with similar profiles.

If you’re looking for a dark horse of sorts to win this weekend, Briscoe might just be a good option.

7) Chase Elliott - +1100

Chase Elliott’s otherwise fantastic summer hit a bit of a speed bump last week with a 13th-place finish at Indianapolis. But he maintained his spot atop the regular season standings and will look to rebound this week.

Elliott was remarkably strong at Iowa a year ago, starting ninth and finishing third both in the second stage and at the end of the race.

Like Briscoe, he represents extremely good value at +1100 and is a real threat to pick up his second win of the season.

6) Joey Logano - +1000

For about 15 minutes of last week’s Brickyard 400, it looked like reigning champion Joey Logano and Paul Wolfe had yet again pulled a rabbit out of the hat.

Logano came out of the last pit cycle leading the race. But a blown right rear tire relegated him to a lowly 32nd-place finish.

Logano hasn’t had the speed he’d hoped for this season, but Iowa could represent a chance to change that. Both he and Team Penske have been good on these types of tracks for years, and Logano finished sixth here a year ago.

If he can find some speed in qualifying and start closer to the front than he has been, Logano is absolutely a threat to win on Sunday.

5) William Byron - +900

Byron ran inside the top 10 for almost the entire day last week at Indianapolis before running out of fuel on the last lap and finishing 16th. But the strong run should give him some much-needed confidence after a rough month of July.

Another thing that will give Byron confidence is returning to a track where he finished second a year ago after starting on the second row.

You can almost guarantee that he and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates will have speed. So Byron’s chances of winning will come down solely to whether he and his team can execute.

4) Ryan Blaney - +550

With the fourth-best odds, Blaney almost feels a little undervalued here. He dominated at this track a year ago on the way to victory and has had similar success at Phoenix, St. Louis, and New Hampshire, all tracks that profile similarly.

Routinely over the last few seasons, Team Penske, and Blaney in particular, have shown incredible long-run speed at tracks one mile or less, particularly those with low-speed corners.

The field is competitive enough that Blaney is far from a lock, and anything could happen to end his day early. But a win feels like a real possibility, and a top-five finish feels almost assured.

3) Christopher Bell - +500

Bell over Blaney, only if even slightly, feels a tad surprising here. Yes, Bell is similarly extremely good on these types of tracks. He won the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro earlier this year and finished fourth at Iowa a year ago.

But it feels like Bell hasn’t been able to get out of his own way of late, including late crashes at both Dover and Indianapolis, where he had nobody to blame but himself.

Bell’s too good of a driver to stay in a rut for too long, and maybe Iowa is the perfect place to turn things around. But I don’t entirely love the value here.

T1) Kyle Larson - +450

Surprise, surprise, the two drivers who battled atop our power rankings for the last two months also top the odds to win this week.

Kyle Larson qualified on the pole for last year’s race at Iowa and battled Blaney throughout the first two stages before forcing a three-wide move and crashing out early in the third stage.

He’d go on to finish 34th, but it’s abundantly clear that Larson and crew chief Cliff Daniels know exactly what they need to contend for a win this time around.

T1) Denny Hamlin +450

Hamlin didn’t have quite the same speed as Larson last year at Iowa. He qualified 12th and didn’t score in the first stage before finishing sixth in stage two.

But he had worked himself up toward the front before getting caught up in Larson’s wreck on lap 219 of 350.

Who knows where Hamlin would’ve finished, but Iowa is the exact type of track on which Hamlin usually excels, although that’s becoming true of most places these days.

Nobody would be surprised if the Joe Gibbs Racing star added to his series-leading win total on Sunday.