NASCAR Dollar Tree 301 Predictions, Odds & Start Time at New Hampshire (Aug. 23)
By Phil Bobbitt in Racing
Published:
- Tyler Reddick won the pole, but his performance across Saturday’s full practice session created several reasons for concern.
- Our Dollar Tree 301 card attacks three head-to-head matchups, with plus money available on two underdogs.
- Read below for NASCAR Dollar Tree 301 predictions, odds and start time at New Hampshire.‘
Dollar Tree has evolved over the years.
Once upon a time, everything inside the store cost one dollar. You could enter with six bucks and leave with a spatula, three birthday cards, a suspicious extension cord and enough off-brand lemon cookies to survive a moderate regional emergency.
Prices have increased, but the experience remains magical. Nobody enters Dollar Tree with a shopping list. You simply follow the fluorescent lighting until the store tells you what your family needs.
Our betting card for Sunday’s Dollar Tree 301 follows a similar philosophy. We entered Saturday expecting to shop around. Then Tyler Reddick won the pole despite ranking 27th in the SpeedwaySteve2 practice metric, and the model placed two enormous red clearance stickers directly on the No. 45 Toyota.
Reddick will start first, but his speed across the complete practice session did not match the qualifying lap. William Byron ranked first in our overall practice metric. Chase Elliott also ranked ahead of Reddick, despite beginning Sunday’s race 28 positions farther back.
We will fade Reddick in two matchups and finish the card with Chase Briscoe at plus money over Kyle Larson.
There is rain in Sunday’s forecast, which has already moved the start forward one hour. Cup Series teams will have four sets of wet-weather tires available. That introduces another layer of uncertainty at a track that hardly requires assistance creating strategy problems.
Pack a poncho, locate the discounted batteries and try not to think too hard about where Dollar Tree found a 14-piece tool set for $5.
We have matchups to bet.
NASCAR Dollar Tree 301 Odds
Odds from Kalshi ahead of Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. New to prediction markets? Lock in our Kalshi referral code, and see how the top prediction markets price the Dollar Tree 301.
NASCAR Dollar Tree 301 Predictions
Matchups
William Byron over Tyler Reddick (+115, Fanatics)
Reddick starts from the pole after beating Josh Berry by 0.015 seconds in qualifying. Byron starts third.
If we stopped the evaluation there, this matchup would look much closer than the model believes it is.
Byron ranked first in the SpeedwaySteve2 practice metric. He produced the strongest overall practice score in the field, then backed it up by qualifying on the second row.
Reddick’s pole lap told a very different story from the rest of his Saturday. He ranked 27th in the SS2 practice metric, leaving a massive gap between his qualifying position and the speed he showed throughout the session.
Reddick still has clean air and a short route to early stage points. The pole carries real value at New Hampshire, where passing can become a daylong administrative process. His larger problem may arrive as the tires wear and the race settles into longer runs.
Byron projects to finish 7.92, while Reddick lands at 15.81. Byron also ranks fourth in projected finish, fourth in comparable-track average running position and fifth in the power ratings. Reddick ranks 11th, 12th and 11th in those categories.
Practice and qualifying moved Byron from 10.09 in the original projections to 7.92. Reddick barely moved at all, improving from 15.89 to 15.81 despite earning the best possible starting position.
That is telling. The model rewarded Reddick for the pole and still found almost no reason to change its opinion of his expected finish.
Their recent New Hampshire results support the separation. Byron started fifth and finished third here last season. Reddick started fourth and faded to 21st.
Byron also owns the top-ranked pit crew in the model, while Reddick ranks 18th. Pit-road execution becomes especially important at New Hampshire, where gaining positions under green is considerably more difficult than losing six of them during a stop.
We are laying only +115 with the driver who showed better overall practice speed, starts two positions behind Reddick and owns an eight-position advantage in the projections.
That is the easiest item to place in the basket.
Chase Elliott over Tyler Reddick (+160 at theScore Bet)
The second Reddick fade requires more imagination.
Elliott starts 29th after a poor qualifying effort, leaving him nearly the entire field to navigate before reaching Reddick. Starting 28 positions behind the pole winner is generally not included in the instructional pamphlet for winning a NASCAR matchup.
Then theScore Bet hung +160, and suddenly we had paperwork to complete.
The SpeedwaySteve2 model gives Elliott a 46.9% chance to win this matchup. Odds of +160 carry an implied probability of only 38.5%. That creates an edge of more than eight percentage points, even though the model projects Reddick to finish slightly ahead.
Elliott ranked 16th in the SS2 practice metric, 11 positions better than Reddick. His comparable-track numbers are also stronger. Elliott owns a 12.9 average running position across the model’s 13-race comparable sample, compared to 15.55 for Reddick. He also averages more fast laps and laps led.
New Hampshire has already provided a useful example of Elliott overcoming this exact problem. He started 27th here last season and drove to fifth. Reddick began fourth and finished 21st.
Elliott also finished fifth at Richmond last weekend after starting 13th. Reddick gained considerably more ground from 32nd but still finished six positions behind Elliott in 11th.
The before-and-after projections moved Elliott from 14.63 to 17.36 following practice and qualifying. The model properly punished him for the 29th-place starting position. Reddick remains projected only 1.55 positions ahead despite starting at the opposite end of the field.
That is an awfully small projected gap between two drivers separated by 28 positions on the grid.
Elliott also holds a meaningful pit-road advantage. His crew ranks sixth in the model, compared to 18th for Reddick. One strong stop could erase several of the positions Elliott must gain on the track.
The obvious risk is traffic. Elliott must spend the early portion of the race passing cars while Reddick controls the field from the preferred position. A long green-flag opening run would make this wager uncomfortable very quickly.
Fortunately, NASCAR rarely protects our emotional well-being for an entire afternoon. Cautions, pit strategy and possible weather give Elliott opportunities to erase the starting-position disadvantage.
At +160, Elliott only needs to win this matchup 38.5% of the time. The model puts him at 46.9%, leaving enough value to justify the uncomfortable starting-position gap.
Chase Briscoe over Kyle Larson (+130, Fanatics)
Larson starts ninth. Briscoe starts 17th.
Larson also ranked fourth in the SS2 practice metric, while Briscoe ranked 10th. The market has several perfectly reasonable explanations for making Larson the favorite.
It may have underestimated everything else.
Briscoe projects to finish 11.46, slightly ahead of Larson at 12.4. The model gives Briscoe a 51.9% chance to win the matchup, yet Fanatics is pricing him like a 43.5% underdog.
That is a substantial disagreement for two drivers separated by less than one projected finishing position.
Recent form supplies the strongest argument for Briscoe. He ranks near the top of the field in the model’s recent-form metric after finishing second at Richmond last weekend. Briscoe led 171 laps and spent the entire night racing near the front.
Larson finished sixth at Richmond, but his average running position was 16.8. He recovered from a 30th-place starting position and produced a good result. The afternoon underneath that finish was much less convincing.
The power ratings currently label Briscoe as a riser and Larson as a faller. Briscoe ranks sixth overall, one position ahead of Larson. He also carries the stronger last-three-race and last-five-race scores by a wide margin.
Practice and qualifying improved Larson’s projection from 14.24 to 12.4. Briscoe moved backward from 9.71 to 11.46. Even after absorbing those changes, the model still projects Briscoe to finish ahead.
Briscoe also owns a small pit-road advantage, ranking third in the model while Larson ranks seventh. The gap is not enormous, but we will gladly accept every possible advantage when the sportsbook is offering +130.
Larson remains dangerous. He finished seventh at New Hampshire last season and carries one of the best practice profiles in Sunday’s field. Nobody should be shocked if he drives directly to the front and turns our wager into mulch.
Fanatics has charged us handsomely for Larson’s obvious advantages. The model believes the bill is still too high.
Briscoe finished 10th here last season after starting 18th, nearly identical to Sunday’s 17th-place starting position. He led 19 laps during that race and followed it with one of the strongest short-flat-track performances of the season at Richmond last weekend.
We are getting +130 on the driver the model projects to finish ahead.
At Dollar Tree, that qualifies as buying in bulk.
Dollar Tree 301 Start Time
The Dollar Tree 301 begins Sunday at 2:00 p.m. ET on USA Network and HBO Max. Note that rain in the forecast has already moved the start forward one hour.
Phil Bobbitt is a motorsports betting analyst and recurring guest on CBS Sports HQ, The Early Edge, and VSiN’s A Numbers Game. He and his pal Steve developed a racing algorithm that’s profited over 260 units and $1 million in DFS winnings since 2020.
