Atlanta does it again. Sunday’s intense battle capped off a weekend of great racing between Trucks, O’Reilly, and the Cup Series. The result? 23XI’s Tyler Reddick wins back-to-back races to start the season for just the sixth time in NASCAR history. Is the elusive Tom Emanski in sight this weekend at Circuit of the Americas? Well, he won here in 2023 and has yet to finish outside of the top 5 so the threat is legitimate. As for our early week matchup handicaps, another 1-1 split like at Daytona spares us from too much heartburn on the drafting tracks starting the season. We get a change of pace from intense to technical as the Cup Series continues its trek west to COTA for the 2026 DuraMax Grand Prix.
- Track type: road course
- Track length: 2.4 miles
- Laps/total miles: 95/228
- Stage lengths (laps): 20/25/50
Handicapping the 2026 DuraMax Grand Prix
NASCAR started running the Circuit of the Americas road course in 2021 with a rain-shortened win by Chase Elliott. Since then, Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, and most recently, Christopher Bell have claimed victory on the fringes of Austin, Texas. As you would expect, the ifantasyrace.com Similar Track Guide ties COTA to road course staples Sonoma and Watkins Glen with secondary comps being the street and hybrid road courses of the Charlotte Roval and Chicago Street Course. The San Diego Street Course will fall into that secondary bucket later in the season.
Looking back at last week’s power ratings, our top Atlanta-specific drivers (Blaney, Logano, Busch) did not necessarily outperform the general superspeedway producers (Elliott, Reddick, Wallace). There is plenty of commonality between strong drivers at COTA and road courses overall, though the past COTA winners sit firmly on the right side of line. The #97 of Shane van Gisbergen stands out as an elite road racer – to state the obvious – who hasn’t yet realized the same level of success here.
Note that 19-year-old Cup Series rookie Connor Zilisch is not shown on the plot but is certainly a threat on this type of track. Current form is still a lightly-weighted aspect in our power ratings so that is also absent from the plot. Our amount at risk on a given head-to-head matchup position is now 80% of a standard unit. The stakes are higher and the volatility on the track is lower. So let’s see what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into at the 2026 DuraMax Grand Prix…
Featured Head-To-Head Matchups
K Larson (-130) vs. C Briscoe (+100)
I’ve already admitted to being a half step behind on Chase Briscoe this season. Compared to seven other sharp NASCAR handicappers, our power rank for him was the lowest. His bump up in class to the #19 JGR Toyota and gradual progression throughout the 2025 season have borne dramatic improvement. Don’t get me wrong, I decay prior season data so 2024 and earlier have lower weighting to begin with. This week Briscoe sits as an even-money dog to the reigning Cup Series Champion.
When it comes to road course racing, the Champ has had a rockier road in recent seasons. Back in Larson’ 2021 Championship season the results were much different: 3 wins, a runner-up, and a P3 finish. 2022 was slightly less prolific with the introduction of the Gen7 car. Then the top finishes began to dwindle in the 2024-2025 seasons outside of a Sonoma win and strong results at the hybrid Charlotte Roval. Finishes can be deceiving, so look at the underlying race quality metrics on road courses these last couple seasons. Larson posted top ten numbers in just four of the eleven races – two of which came in those elite Roval performances.
Chase broke out on road courses last season after tough sledding in the first three years of the Gen7 era. Only three top ten finishes from 2022-2024 with corresponding metrics, and two of those better performances came on hybrid courses. Briscoe seems to be benefitting from James Small’s leadership and the #19 team in general. In the 2025 season, he finished P14 or better in five of the six road course races with Chicago Street Course being the outlier. Plus Briscoe posted similarly strong performance metrics. He rated top ten in five of those races with the Roval as the exception.
WAGER: Briscoe +100 > Larson
Neither driver has cracked the top ten at COTA in the Gen7 car. But Chase Briscoe’s significant jump up last season with his new team weighs more heavily than his previous seasons at SHR. Handicapping is a very humbling endeavor, so I shouldn’t be surprised if Kyle Larson pulls a rabbit out of his hat or if Chase stumbles despite these higher expectations. But my numbers make Briscoe the favorite here and I cannot pass up this cheap price at Bet365.
C Buescher (-115) vs. AJ Allmendinger (-115)
This head-to-head matchup pits two drivers I backed in last week’s featured handicaps at Atlanta. AJ is an accomplished road racer with three such Cup Series victories, the last of which came in the 2023 playoff race at the Roval. In the two seasons since, Allmendinger has five top ten finishes – including four P6s – with strong underlying performance metrics. Chris Buescher has been anything but a slouch though. He won the 2024 race at Watkins Glen and has eleven top ten finishes in the 16 road course races held between 2023-2025. The race quality elements echo that success as well.
Their work at COTA looks drastically different on face value. Buescher has been boringly steady here in the last three races while the Dinger suffered some tough results despite running fairly well. The race quality edge in the Gen7 era goes to Allmendinger across those four contests though. Maybe this matchup is more like a coin flip, however, we have the #17 Ford one tier above him and are willing to lay the -115. An alternative/supplement to this position is a meaty +145 Top 10 price at Caesars Sportsbook that probably gets our money as well.
WAGER: Buescher (-115) > Allmendinger
Action On the Track
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