Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt Predictions, Picks & Odds

• With a newfound affinity for dirt, Matt Crafton seeks his first victory of the season.
• Double-duty drivers strengthen the field for the Truck race at Bristol.
• Stewart and Jessica Friesen are NASCAR’s first husband/wife combo since 1998.

Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt Odds

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Saturday’s Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt marks the return to a dirt track for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series after an absence during the 2020 pandemic-interrupted season. The Truck race will precede by one day the NASCAR Cup Series’ first race on a dirt track since 1970.

Bristol Motor Speedway has covered its .533-mile, high-banked concrete surface with 2,300 truckloads of Tennessee red clay for the unique NASCAR weekend. Saturday’s Truck race will be contested over 150 laps, with stage breaks scheduled after 40 and 90 laps. Qualifying for the 40-truck field will take place in four heat races on Saturday afternoon.

Can Matt Crafton, a Dirt Convert, Get His First Win of the Season at Bristol

Matt Crafton is one of seven NASCAR Camping World Truck Series winners at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, the half-mile dirt track that hosted the Trucks from 2013 through 2019. In fact, Crafton is the only former Eldora winner not competing in both NASCAR races this weekend.

It was at Eldora where Crafton got his first taste of dirt racing. By 2017 he had developed sufficient skills to win at the track. Enamored with the dirt discipline, Crafton has formed his own dirt-modified team and already has raced roughly 15 times on dirt this year—just not in a truck. Because of the nature of the dirt at Bristol, Crafton doesn’t think the track will develop a cushion at the top of the outside lane.

“No, I don’t think there is going to be a cushion—there’s a difference in a cushion and widening out,” said Crafton (+1200 at DraftKings Sportsbook), a three-time series champion who is looking for his first victory of the season.

It’s a finer dirt on there than Eldora. Eldora, you build the big cushion up against the wall, but you will widen out when the moisture starts drying up on the bottom… you are going to start looking for moisture. It will widen out at that point, but I don’t see a cushion building. But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be wide with good side-by-side racing.

Double-Duty Drivers Will Strengthen the Truck Series Field for Dirt Race

Eight drivers entered in Sunday’s Food City Dirt Race for the NASCAR Cup Series also will compete in Saturday’s Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt. Daniel Suarez (+8000), Chase Briscoe (+500), Bubba Wallace (+3300), Kevin Harvick (+2500), Ryan Newman (+1600), Kyle Larson (+225), Martin Truex Jr. (+2500) and Stewart Friesen (+600). Wallace, Larson, Briscoe and Friesen are former winners at Eldora Speedway, perhaps the best predictor of success at Bristol.

Larson is the odds-on choice to win both the Truck race and the Cup race that follows on Sunday. The driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet is the two-time defending champion of the Chili Bowl, the marquee event for midget racers. In addition, Larson won 46 of the 96 dirt races he entered last year in a variety of vehicles—from midgets to winged 410 sprint cars to Silver Crown cars to dirt late models.

Larson also got a chance to try out the Bristol dirt in last weekend’s Dirt Nationals, where he finished second on Friday and Saturday in each of the two dirt late model features.

“Anticipation and the unknown,” Larson said of the weekend races.

Even me being a dirt racer, I really don’t know what to expect. These cars are way different than what I’m used to racing on dirt. They are way heavier with a lot less power than I’m used to. I think the only thing that transfers from my previous dirt experience to this weekend is how to read the surface and how it changes and evolves throughout the weekend and the race. I may be able to adapt to that quicker than a pavement racer.

Stewart and Jessica Friesen Bring a Husband/Wife Combo Back to NASCAR

Both Stewart Friesen and wife Jessica are entered in Saturday’s Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt, marking the first time since 1998 that a husband and wife are slated to compete in the same NASCAR national series race.

Both are accomplished dirt racers, with Stewart having accumulated more than 300 victories in the dirt-modified ranks. The 37-year-old Canadian also is the most recent winner at Eldora Speedway, having triumphed there in 2019.

The daughter of dirt modified driver Ray Zemken, Jessica, 34, won the 2004 Utica-Rome Speedway Dirt Sportsman championship. She drove sprint cars for Tony Stewart Racing from 2010-2013. If you want to bet on Jessica, you’ll have to bet the Field at +5000. Despite her dirt experience, she’s not listed individually.