With the Daytona 500, one thing’s for certain: NASCAR does things ack basswards.
Unlike most sports, which schedule their most important event — the Super Bowl, say — at the very end of the season, NASCAR starts its season (from a points perspective, anyway) with its Super Bowl, staged on an enormous, 2.5-mile track on the beaches of North Florida, in a portion of the schizophrenic Sunshine State that can still rightfully call itself the South.
All due respect to the Indy 500 and its checkered-flag milk bottles, but there are reasons why they call Daytona “the Great American Race,” and those reasons are RVs, domestic beeramids, and race cars that have proper roofs, creating the illusion that just about anyone can hop in a stock car and let it rip around the massive oval like they’re Burt Reynolds or something.
‘Anyone in the field can win’
What isn’t for certain is who’s likely to win this year’s edition of the Great American Race, which will be contested on Sunday in Daytona. Three-time Daytona champ Denny Hamlin is the consensus favorite at odds ranging from +850 at DraftKings to 10/1 at Betfred, while 51-year-old Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, who’s attempting to become just the fourth driver to win both an F1 title and the Daytona 500, can be had at odds ranging from 100/1 at DraftKings to 1,000/1 at Betfred and Caesars.
“As much as I like Denny and as good as he is at Daytona, I don’t think you take anybody at 8/1 odds at a track like Daytona,” said Stephen Young, lead NASCAR analyst for RotoGrinders, which shares a parent company with US Bets. “When I’m looking at Daytona, I like to look more matchup-based and find good odds that way. It’s one of the highest volatility races of the season. It’s one of four races where anyone in the field can win. I like to take longshots and look at top tens.”
To this end, Young thinks Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (33/1 at Caesars) might be a viable play, as could the race’s defending champion, Michael McDowell (60/1 at DraftKings and Betfred, which is indicative of how tough it is to repeat at Daytona).
“Stenhouse is a really aggressive driver who is likely to either wreck or be there at the end of the race,” said Young. “McDowell, he takes the opposite approach — lets the race happen and tries to be clean at the end. Ty Dillon’s another one. He looks to be pretty clean. He’s had a chance a few times to win. He’s definitely my favorite out of that group” at 100/1 (at Barstool, Betfred, and DraftKings).
Kyle Larson (12/1 at Betfred) will be in pole position for Sunday’s race after ticking off up-and-comer Justin Haley with his “B.S.” tactics in last Saturday’s Clash at the Coliseum, a short-track exhibition in Los Angeles. But where one starts in the Daytona 500 is of little consequence when it comes to bookmaking.
This is how @Justin_Haley_'s day came to an early end. pic.twitter.com/ZdT1QL8xkB
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 7, 2022
Qualifying position doesn’t mean “as much as you would probably think,” said Matt Stallknecht, NASCAR’s senior manager of sports betting. “Daytona is a unique beast in that the nature of that track as a superspeedway, the positions change so quickly. The gist of it is the racing is very chaotic. You can start 40th and be in the top 10 in four or five laps due to the nuances of drafting and other things that make that race special. The books, if they’re smart, will probably take a pretty measured approach to qualifying.”
Featured matchup pairings to ‘evolve’
During a press call on Jan. 26, Stallknecht and NASCAR’s managing director of sports betting, Joe Solosky, discussed how the circuit was making a push to have sportsbooks highlight certain featured matchups that pit one driver against another, creating a race within a race. For Daytona, one matchup that catches Young’s eye is McDowell vs. Haley.
“I’m excited about the featured matchups, especially if we don’t see a lot of [odds] movement,” Young said on Monday. “Michael McDowell vs. Justin Haley — McDowell opened at +160 and it’s been bet down to +150. That should almost be a pick ’em.”
McDowell’s since been bet down to +108 at Barstool (with Haley at -143), but he was still at +130 to finish better than Haley (-160) on Thursday afternoon at DraftKings, where Chase Elliott (-155) was favored to outperform his bitter rival, Kevin Harvick (+125).
While NASCAR’s plan is “to mix it up” in terms of which drivers are matched up against each other from race to race, Stallknecht said, “I think it’s gonna evolve if, for whatever reason, there are two drivers, maybe they’re feuding, maybe there’s a good battle at the top of the standings. Who’s in the news right now? What drivers are moving the needle or consistently being linked? We’re capturing different segments of the field and pitting drivers who are really evenly matched.”
And it won’t just be Stallknecht and Solosky who are crafting these decisions.
“We will rely on data from sportsbooks for what we don’t see in the narrative and traditional content,” said Solosky. “There might be a longshot that people are looking at throughout the season that we might incorporate in these matchups.”
Photo: Jasen Vinlove/USA TODAY
