Ryan Blaney heads into New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend as the defending race winner. He led 116 laps there last year, is currently second in the Cup Series standings, and is already locked into the Chase. On paper, that makes him the obvious pick. However, PRN analyst David Styles does not see it that way.
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“I’m not really favoring Ryan Blaney this week,” Styles said on PRN Live. “In the matchups, I’m looking at him in two different matchups. He’s with Christopher Bell on Caesars. Christopher Bell +100. Ryan Blaney is favored at -130. I think Christopher Bell, who is very, very good at this track, has the second-highest driver rating at 104.6. I actually like him a little bit better than Blaney at that +100 matchup.”
Styles is not calling Ryan Blaney a bad pick overall. He is saying Bell and Joey Logano have better value head-to-head at this specific track this specific weekend. New Hampshire is the penultimate regular-season race before Daytona closes out the Chase field of 16, so every position is extra important right now.
Blaney’s Richmond race last weekend also raises a fair question. He started on pole, led 88 laps, and won Stage 1. He still finished 13th. There’s a gap between speed and result, which is exactly why Styles is willing to take the other side.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway is one of Bell’s best tracks in the Cup Series. He’s won two Cup races there. And with seven runner-up finishes, the No. 20 team is hungry to taste their first win of the season.
Coming onto what the track is like, New Hampshire is a flat, one-mile oval where feel and precision matter more than horsepower. That is exactly the kind of surface Bell has made his own. He comes from dirt racing, managed a win in the rain-laden 2024 race.
“I think both of those guys have a lot of momentum, and they will be a little bit better than that 12 team at New Hampshire this upcoming Sunday,” Styles said. Logano’s case rests on a yearly pattern of mid-season surges, not recent performance alone.
On June 28, Joey Logano was 20th in points with no wins through 18 races. Since then, he has won twice, posted four top-10s in five races, and climbed to ninth in the standings. He got more than 40 percent of his season points across his last five races. NASCAR has seen that comparable surges appeared in his 2020, 2018, and 2016 campaigns. This is a pattern, not a run of good luck.
“Logano, ton of momentum coming off of a win last week, and he is also +100 to Ryan Blaney’s -135. I’m going to take both of those drivers over Blaney this upcoming weekend,” Styles said.
New Hampshire is another story for him. Since Logano is a Connecticut native, this is the closest Cup Series race to his hometown. He has two Cup wins at Loudon, and led a race-high 147 laps last year before finishing fourth. Ryan Blaney won that race.
This weekend, Styles believes the dynamic flips. Ryan Blaney still has the track record, but Bell and Logano are his top picks heading into this race weekend.