Six plus-money plays at a track nobody has raced in seven years. No anchor this week — just prices that haven't caught up to the tire data.
Chicagoland Speedway · eero 400 · July 2026 · By PitByNumbers Staff · 7 min read Get the full Chicagoland card before the green flag. Why these six Chicagoland has been dark since 2019. The Next Gen car has never turned a competitive lap there, which means every notebook in the garage is empty and every price on the board is a guess dressed up as analysis .
When the market is guessing, it defaults to reputation — and reputation is exactly what we’re here to fade. The one hard piece of data that exists: Goodyear is bringing the same tire setup that just ran Nashville on June 1, and before that Las Vegas, Darlington, Kansas, Texas and Charlotte. Same-tire form is the closest thing to a Chicagoland notebook anyone owns.
So no anchor this week — a blind track doesn’t sell locks, and we won’t pretend it does. Six plus-money plays instead, each with a verified same-tire result the market is underweighting, each sized to what it is. On a narrow-groove 1.5-miler where track position is the whole economy, 12th and 10th are one pit cycle apart.
1. Erik Jones — Top 10 (+260) The best bet on the card, and the only man on it with trophies from this property. Jones won the Chicagoland Xfinity race twice — 2015 and 2016 — and in his last two Cup starts here he went 6th in 2018 and 7th in 2019 .
Nobody else on this card has ever finished top-10 in a Cup car at Joliet. The current form holds up its end: a runner-up at Michigan last month on pure merit, his first career Cup stage win at Texas, and an 11th at Nashville on the exact tire Chicagoland runs Sunday, in a Toyota — the manufacturer that has led 773 intermediate laps this season. And then the motivation: Jones sits 12 points below the playoff cutline after a rear-of-field penalty for unapproved adjustments wrecked his Sonoma.
Under a format with no win-and-in, he needs ceiling weeks starting immediately. Track pedigree, same-tire speed, manufacturer edge, and desperation, at +260. That’s the whole checklist.
2. Zane Smith — Top 10 (+500) The sharpest same-tire résumé on this card, at the second-longest price. Five weeks ago at Nashville — on the identical Goodyear setup coming to Chicagoland — Smith ran 9th and led 18 laps , briefly threatening to win a stage.
Three weeks after that he ran 4th at San Diego . He arrives at his 100th career Cup start with a career-high six top-10s , and his own read on it: the mile-and-a-halves have been good to Front Row since Charlotte. He even has old Joliet laps — a 4th in the 2018 ARCA race here.
The honest counter is manufacturer math: Ford hasn’t won a race since March, and Front Row’s ceiling on a Toyota-dominated track type is real. But we’re not betting the win — we’re betting a top-10 from a driver who just posted one on this exact tire, priced at 5-to-1 because the market remembers the name, not the number. 3.
Ryan Preece — Top 10 (+450) The most motivated driver in the field. Preece sits 15th, exactly one point ahead of Austin Cindric on the playoff ladder, in a format with no lifelines — every stage point at Chicagoland is a playoff share, and nobody will race Sunday’s stage breaks harder. The career year is real: a Stage 2 win at San Diego , an 8th at Sonoma as RFK’s best car, and a season-opening Clash trophy that announced the No.
60 program had legs. Now the honesty, because it’s the brand: his one Cup start here was a 28th in 2019 in lesser equipment, and his Nashville on this tire ended in a radiator failure after 90 laps — a 36th that tells you nothing about pace and everything about why the floor exists. This is a motivation-and-momentum bet at a fair price, not a data lock.
Sized accordingly. 4. Daniel Suárez — Top 10 (+260) The Coca-Cola 600 winner, 9th in points, and the one card on this page where we’re buying the pit box as much as the driver.
The 600 win was crew chief Ryan Sparks calling two tires under a late caution and Suárez closing the deal — opportunism, not domination, and at a blind track where pit cycles will decide the running order, opportunism is a skill worth paying for. The intermediate form is real enough: 6th at Texas, 6th at Michigan, a Stage 2 win at Nashville where he led 10 laps on Sunday’s tire. He also has more Joliet history than most — three Cup starts (12th, 11th, 24th) and a pair of 4th-place Xfinity runs.
The counter we won’t hide: that Nashville stage win decayed into a 19th at the finish, and his comp-track running position says he lives around 20th on this track type. At +260 you’re paying a short price for strategy upside. We like it small, and we like it better if he qualifies inside the top 15.
5. Riley Herbst — Top 10 (+1100) The arbitrage play. Two weeks ago Herbst’s team went 1-2 at San Diego — and Herbst himself ran 8th with 3 laps led , his first career top-10 that didn’t come on a superspeedway.
He ran 11th at Texas in May, ran 9th in Stage 1 at Nashville on Sunday’s tire, and he drives equipment identical to two 2026 Cup race winners from the manufacturer that owns the intermediate season. The machinery says top-15 car with top-10 spikes. The price says backmarker.
Why the number is long: his own résumé is thin — that Nashville Stage 1 run faded to 17th, and the sophomore season is still more flashes than floors. Fine. At 11-to-1 we don’t need a floor, we need one clean Sunday from the fourth-best car in the best intermediate stable in the sport.
That’s a price mistake, and we’re taking it small. 6. Corey Heim — Top 10 (+260) The fastest wild card on the board, and we’ll show you both hands.
The speed case: in his most recent start Heim won a Cup race by 10.365 seconds — the largest margin by a first-time winner since Alan Kulwicki in 1988 — and back in May he led 69 laps at Texas before a crash ended his day. Real 1.5-mile pace, a Toyota, crew chief Bootie Barker calling the shots, and he turns 24 on race day. The story writes itself.
The handcuffs, because the alternative is selling you a story the fine print won’t back: the open No. 67 is points-ineligible and scores zero stage points , which pushes the team onto off-cycle strategy all day — that’s exactly how his Nashville on this tire became a 25th. No stage incentive plus zero career Chicagoland laps equals the widest finish range on this card.
At +260 the price is short for that variance. We’re in because the ceiling is a win, but this is the smallest unit on the page. Worth your time alongside this card: the intermediate numbers on every driver in the field , and the full Chicagoland odds board as the lines move toward the green flag.
Jones is the conviction — the only man on the card with Chicagoland trophies and current same-tire speed at once. Smith is the data play the market slept on. Preece is desperation at a fair price, Suárez is a pit box with a crown jewel on its shelf, Herbst is an equipment mispricing, and Heim is a Cup winner’s ceiling wearing an open car’s handcuffs.
Six plus-money swings at a track where nobody — not the teams, not the books — has notes. We don’t need all six. We need the prices wrong, and at a blind racetrack, prices are never more wrong than this.