Eric Chemi

CNBC Reporter

Chase Analytics: Kyle Busch slight favorite to win Sprint Cup title

By Eric ChemiNov 17, 2016, 12:00 PM EST

The model turned out to just scrape by with accurate guesses at Phoenix. We had predicted Kyle Busch and Joey Logano as our two best bets to fill the last two spots, but we said it was a really close call.

And that’s exactly what happened. They made it, but man it was really a close call.

So here we are: four drivers for the title. The last two drivers who made it are actually the heavier favorites than Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards, who were locked in before Phoenix.

“I’d say it’s a toss-up,” said Josh Browne, a former Sprint Cup crew chief and now co-founder at Pit Rho. “Edwards won at Texas, but Logano led the most laps.”

Kyle Busch won this race last year to win the title. Our forecast likes him a little bit more than everybody else, but it’s very tough to declare a clear favorite. Johnson has recent momentum, but Busch has been strong all year. Logano has also been consistent all season, but just not as good as Busch. And Carl Edwards, probably the least likely winner, still has a decent shot of taking this in the unique one-race format.

This is the problem with calling a winner. It’s just one race, not an entire season. There’s no chance to “average things out” or “balance the ups and downs” – one mistake and that’s it.

Something else to watch out for, Busch’s ability late in the race to catch up. “Of these four, he’s the best driver at squeezing a good finish from a less-than-perfect car,” Browne said. “When it comes time to perform, there is no better driver at finishing strong.”

The data backs that up too. Busch has gained an average of 0.81 positions in the final 20 percent of a race, according to Pit Rho’s lap-by-lap data. That beats Edwards (+0.71) and Johnson (+0.63). And it certainly beats Logano, who loses 0.58 spots in that final chunk of the race. Think Homestead 2014.

PS: Matt Kenseth has a 73 percent chance of finishing fifth in the standings, the best of the rest. Kasey Kahne has a 95 percent chance of finishing 17^th – the best non-chaser.

HOW THE PREDICTIONS WORK

With the help of Andrew Maness from racing analytics firm Pit Rho, we ran the numbers to show every driver’s shot of moving through each round of the Chase. The mathematical model was designed by both Maness and me, using past driver performance to predict future results. By running 100,000 simulations of how the rest of the season might play out, we see the most likely outcomes.

Eric Chemi runs data journalism for our sister network CNBC, including a heavy dose of sports analytics. Prior to that, his NASCAR forecasts have been on Sprint Cup television broadcasts, and he has consulted for Sprint Cup teams on strategy, statistics, data, and analytics. He graduated with an engineering degree from MIT.

Chase Analytics: Road to Miami tough to forecast after Carl Edwards’ win

By Eric ChemiNov 10, 2016, 2:00 PM EST

Carl Edwards’ rain-shortened win at Texas guaranteed our second title contender, but it made the overall Chase picture for Homestead even more confusing.

That’s because Edwards was a dark horse to make it in. He’s reduced the opportunity for a stronger driver to advance, leaving a lot of good guys on the outside looking in.

We know that only two of these five top-quality drivers can transfer after this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway: Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, and Matt Kenseth. Three of them are definitely going to be out. The computer model is leaning slightly toward Busch and Logano. Busch is the only one with a chance above 50 percent. Nobody in this group is a guarantee – not even close.

Consider this fact to see how up-for-grabs these last two spots are: There is only a 25 percent chance that Busch and Logano will be the two who actually make it. That means there’s a 75 percent chance somebody from the lower group is going to break in.

Harvick in particular is intriguing. He’s way behind on points (17 behind the cut line), but his 29 percent chance to advance is almost entirely due to a 28 percent chance of winning Phoenix. Harvick only has a 1 percent chance to get in on points, effectively putting him in a win-or-bust scenario.

“There’s no doubt Harvick goes into Phoenix as the favorite,” said Josh Browne, former Sprint Cup crew chief and current co-founder at Pit Rho. “We don’t need advanced analytics to tell us Harvick has dominated at this track. Unfortunately, our model also doesn’t yet account for driver paybacks – and I would be surprised to see Harvick make it through Phoenix without a bump or two from the 3 car” because of an incident last week at Texas.

The one driver we haven’t yet mentioned: Kurt Busch. He’s truly an outlier. He’s far back on points and isn’t considered as much of a threat to win. That’s why he only has a 2 percent chance to advance. If you are Jimmie Johnson or Edwards, he’s the guy you want to somehow get in, because you’d hope he’d be less of a threat at Homestead than anybody else.

HOW THE PREDICTIONS WORK

Chase Analytics: Toyotas strong pick to join Jimmie Johnson in Miami

By Eric ChemiNov 3, 2016, 2:00 PM EDT

After a gutsy win by Jimmie Johnson at Martinsville Speedway, he’s locked into the championship round in Miami and shot up to the top of our title favorites.

The model didn’t fully believe in Johnson earlier this Chase, but his recent performance changed the computer’s mind. Johnson’s title chances have jumped from 9 to 10 to 23 percent in the last three weeks.

Martinsville’s biggest loser was Kevin Harvick. Finishing 20th, Harvick’s title chances fell to 15 percent compared to 31 percent last week. He’s had four finishes of 20th or worse in the past 10 races. His 41 percent chance of advancing to the final four is mostly due to his ability to win in this round. Because of his recent inconsistency, he only has a 19 percent chance to get in on points.

You can think of the eight drivers in three groups: There’s Johnson by himself in the first group. Then you have five drivers, all with similar title odds between 13 and 17 percent.

Behind Johnson, we still see the strength of Joe Gibbs Racing: Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, and Kyle Busch are the three favorites to join Johnson at Homestead. In fact, all the Toyotas combined have a 47 percent chance of winning the title.

“The Hendrick stable seems to have found some recent speed at the 1.5-mile tracks,” said Josh Browne, former Sprint Cup crew chief and co-founder at Pit Rho. “With the 48’s recent finishes at Kansas and Charlotte in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him go back-to-back this weekend. It’s tough to count out Harvick and his team – however, the mathematical model is not necessarily bullish on him.”

Entering Martinsville, we discussed how Johnson and Hamlin needed this race as their best way to qualify for the final round. They combined to lead 140 laps. Unfortunately for Hamlin though, he didn’t win. He still has a good 62 percent chance of advancing, but that means there’s a 38 percent chance he won’t make it. A lot of risk for him.

At the bottom, there’s our final group: Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards. Each has about a 10 percent chance of advancing and a measly two percent title odds. The two are trailing in points. It’s going to be hard for them to come back.

Surprisingly, Harvick is only two points ahead of Kurt Busch in the actual standings. But their odds of advancing are very different from each other – a bigger gap than we’d typically see from just two points. That’s because of what we talked about earlier: Harvick has a good shot of winning an upcoming race; Busch does not.

HOW THE PREDICTIONS WORK

Eric Chemi runs data journalism for CNBC, including a heavy dose of sports analytics. Prior to that, his NASCAR forecasts have been on Sprint Cup television broadcasts, and he has consulted for Sprint Cup teams on strategy, statistics, data, and analytics. He graduated with an engineering degree from MIT.

Chase Analytics: Kevin Harvick remains favorite to win title

By Eric ChemiOct 27, 2016, 3:00 PM EDT

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Now that we’ve made it past the craziness of Talladega, we can get back to more accurately forecasting how the rest of the Chase is going to play out.

The big news is the elimination of Brad Keselowski. He had started the Chase as the second biggest favorite to win the title. With him gone, Kevin Harvick now has a huge lead over everybody else, in terms of the odds of advancing and winning.

Beyond Harvick, almost every other driver has about a coin flip’s chance of making it to Homestead. Remember, if the races were completely random and every driver was completely equal, that column on the left would show everyone with a 50/50 shot of advancing. What we see in reality is something very close to that, almost every driver between 41 and 55 percent.

Those numbers are based on historical results. That means the majority of the drivers left in the Chase are evenly matched against each other. Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Carl Edwards are all in that coin-flip group – all four of them are Joe Gibbs Racing teammates.

One crazy concept to watch: There is a five percent chance for the entire JGR team to advance to Homestead.

And take a look at Jimmie Johnson, who seemed to have a lot of momentum after his win a couple weeks ago. Our model has never fully gotten behind him yet, giving him only the fifth best odds, less than a 50 percent chance to advance.

“While the odds are close to 50/50, the current model has Hamlin and Johnson on the outside looking in after this round,” said Josh Browne, former Sprint Cup crew chief and now co-founder at Pit Rho. “There’s no doubt that this weekend’s race at Martinsville is likely the best opportunity for one of these two cars to grab the checkered flag.”

HOW THE PREDICTIONS WORK

Chase Analytics: Forecasting the unknown that is Talladega

By Eric ChemiOct 20, 2016, 2:00 PM EDT

Kevin Harvick’s biggest challenge was simply advancing to the next round, and if he could do that, he would immediately go right back to being the title favorite. It’s what we talked about previously, and that’s what we did.

When the Chase started, Brad Keselowski had the second-best chance at the title. But now he finds himself on the outside looking in. The story is the same with him. He only has a 31 percent chance of advancing past Talladega, but if he can do it, his title odds will jump back up to double digits. His bottleneck right now is this weekend, not the future races.

Look at Matt Kenseth. He’s well ahead on points, but he only has a 98.3 percent title chance of making it. It’s high, but it’s not 100 percent. Remember we saw Jimmie Johnson fail to advance in a round last year even with a 97 percent shot.

Most of the other drivers down the list are straightforward. Talladega is random, it’s crazy, and you really don’t know what’s going to happen. Anybody could win and advance. Anybody could crash and be eliminated.

Because it’s Talladega there’s at least a 70 percent chance that our current group of eight advancing drivers will not be what actually happens.

The one driver that we had hard a time figuring out: Chase Elliott. Because he has such a short Cup history, we had a few options for how to model it. Do we just focus on his own Cup plate career? Do we go with a combination of his Cup and Xfinity races? Or do we go with the fact that he’s taken over Jeff Gordon’s seat, which had top-notch equipment and solid plate results.

In the end, we decided to use Elliott’s combined Cup+Xfinity record. That gave him a 7 percent chance of advancing, but the other options could have either been 0 percent or 28 percent. He’s truly the wild card because we don’t know enough about him yet. In any case, he’s so far back in points that he’s going to have to win or hope that a lot of drivers not finish.

One minor note that hasn’t been mentioned much this season. There are only 40 cars competing each week, instead of 43. That means if you crash and finish dead last, you’re not as far back as you would be in the past. 40^th place is only 30 spots behind the top 10, rather than 33 spots. That’s a slightly better cushion for bad days. And in the case of this weekend, it helps Kenseth and Kyle Busch (who are up 29 and 27 points from the cut off).

If you’re really interested, here’s a chart showing the history of each driver in plate races. In his limited career, Austin Dillon has the best average finish.

HOW THE PREDICTIONS WORK