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2024 Grant Park 165 picks, best bets, Chicago odds, start time: NASCAR expert with 10 winners gives picks
By CBS Sports Staff,
2024-07-06
Chase Elliott is the active NASCAR Cup Series leader with seven road-course victories, but he has not recorded one in three years. Elliott hopes to end the drought when he gets behind the wheel on Sunday for the 2024 Grant Park 165 on the Chicago Street Course. The 2020 Cup Series champion made his way to Victory Lane at Road America in July 2021 to grab sole possession of third place on the all-time list for road-course wins, breaking a tie with four other drivers. Elliott trails leader Jeff Gordon by two victories and is one behind Tony Stewart. The 28-year-old, who was third in this race last year and trails Kyle Larson by 20 points in this season's standings, has recorded 18 top-five finishes and 22 top-10s in 32 Cup Series road starts.
Elliott is listed at 17-2, while Shane van Gisbergen and Tyler Reddick are 6-1 co-favorites in the latest 2024 Grant Park 165 odds. Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell round out the top five 2024 NASCAR at Chicago contenders at 13-2. Sunday's race is scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. ET. Before making any 2024 Grant Park 165 picks or NASCAR predictions, you need to see what NASCAR insider Steven Taranto has to say.
Taranto, who moonlights as a sim racer and has 20 career wins in iRacing, is the lead NASCAR writer for CBSSports.com, and he chronicles stock car racing with the same thoroughness and passion that he's had since becoming a full-time race fan in 2001. He has an annual NASCAR medial credential and also publishes a popular weekly NASCAR predictions column, famously calling Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez's breakthrough wins in 2022.
Taranto has been red-hot for SportsLine in 2024, nailing 10 winners in his best bets, including 16-1 longshot William Byron at the Daytona 500 and 14-1 longshot Chase Elliott at Texas. Anyone following his NASCAR picks has seen huge returns.
For the 2024 Grant Park 165, Taranto is high on Christopher Bell, who is listed at 13-2. The 29-year-old has two wins, six top-five finishes and 12 top-10s in 23 Cup Series starts on road courses. He picked up his first career win on the Daytona Road Course in 2021 and added a playoff win at the Charlotte ROVAL in 2022.
Bell has cracked the top three in two of the last four road course races, including a runner-up at COTA earlier this season. He won both stages in last year's inaugural Chicago Street Race before impending darkness forced NASCAR to shorten the race, which created problems with Bell's pit strategy. He will be excited to have another opportunity this year, especially since he has led 80-plus laps in four of his last six races.
Another surprise: Taranto is fading William Byron, even though he won at COTA and is 14-1. Byron did not do anything special in the inaugural edition of this race, failing to crack the top 10. He won the first road course race this season at COTA, but his results since then have been a major red flag.
He has finished 15th or worse in seven of his last 10 races, and he has not led a single lap in five consecutive races. Byron has already clinched his spot in the playoffs with three wins this season, so motivation is also a concern heading down the stretch of the regular season. Taranto expects Byron to find his best form again at some point, but he is fading the No. 24 driver on Sunday. See what other NASCAR picks he likes at SportsLine.
How to make 2024 Grant Park 165 predictions
Taranto has also identified four other drivers in his 2024 NASCAR at Chicago best bets. He's also high on a huge NASCAR longshot who's going off with more than 75-1 odds. You can only see who they are here.
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