Last year Michael McDowell won the Daytona 500 with +6600 odds.
Any time NASCAR rolls onto one of the carburetor-restricted superspeedways, it is hard to resist rolling the dice on a dark horse. It is equally tempting to think of the entire field as dark horses. With only one driver currently under 10/1 for the outright win, sportsbooks have sweetened the pot as much as possible.
The issue with betting at Daytona is that only two drivers in the field this week have won more than once on this track. With three, Denny Hamlin (+900) and Kevin Harvick (+2000), with two, were featured in this week’s Best Bets column – although to be fair, that title is misleading. NASCAR racing is unpredictable at the best of times. On the restricted superspeedways, predicting a finish is almost impossible.
There are two ways to approach this race. Drivers will either try to stay in the back of the pack until the closing laps or they will enter the race mentally prepared to crash and any result they get above 40th is a gift. Both strategies have worked at various times, but betting on the Daytona 500 is not for the faint of heart.
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While very little is predictive about this race, there are drivers who seem to have developed a 6th Sense about when to charge and when to lay back. Hamlin is one of these drivers, but this ability is salted through the field and bettors can find good values in drivers with longer odds.
McDowell’s win last year was not entirely unexpected. Front Row Motorsports regularly fields strong cars at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway knowing that this their best opportunity to shine. McDowell (+6600) finished fifth in the 2019 Daytona 500 and again the Talladega 2 that year. He failed to crack the top 10 on either track in 2020, but had a pair of top-15s on the course type. After winning the 500 last year, McDowell followed that up with a third in Talladega 1. McDowell’s long odds for the outright win drag those for a top-10 to 2/1 and a top-five bet is available at +700.
Corey LaJoie (+8000) is a driver that won’t get talked about a lot this week, but he has one of the better Daytona records in recent years. He was part of the highlight reel in 2020 when Ryan Newman‘s pirouetting car landed on his hood. Momentum carried LaJoie across the finish line eighth. That was his second consecutive top-10 on this track. Last fall, LaJoie added another top-10 to give him three at Daytona in the last five years.
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In all likelihood, Ross Chastain (+5000) would have been listed as a dark horse this week regardless of the fact that he now has Kurt Busch (+1800) as a teammate. While the former Ganassi guy has had a dysfunctional relationship with Fate in the past, he is known as a great teammate on the plate tracks and will do his best to keep his younger colleague out of trouble. Chastain has two top-10s to his credit in the last three Daytona 500s, including a seventh last year.
You won’t see David Ragan (+12500) at the front of the pack for most of the race. We expect he will find a comfortable slot to run in about a half-lap back – and it is there that he will ride. After the seemingly inevitable ‘Big One’ crash has happened and when Ragan believes the final caution has waved, he will begin moving forward. An outright win is not indicated, but at +350 for a top-10 at PointsBet, he is relevant nonetheless.
Justin Haley (+4000) is not exactly flying under the radar, but he is not front-of-mind for a lot of bettors either. He opens at 40/1 for the outright win and that is insufficient to drag his top-10 odds above even money, but there is a wide spread to his top-five odds of +400. But Haley is in a great car this week, embarking on a full-time season with a team that shows a ton of promise. It’s called gambling for a reason. Ignore his Coke Zero 400 win from 2019 because it came under extremely bizarre circumstances, but he was one spot shy of the top five in that same race last year.
Ty Dillon (+12500) was a dart without a feather last week in the Clash at the Coliseum, to steal a description from Tony Stewart, but that showed just how hungry he is to make an impression on his new owners. He could not have been happy with a one-year hiatus from Cup racing as he watched his brother contend at the highest level. More importantly, Dillon was one of our favorite longshots on this track type for quite some time after he scored three consecutive results of fourth or sixth at Daytona in 2018/2019. If he can reel his enthusiasm in a little and not trigger an accident, (that he gets sept into), he could be a solid choice to earn a top-10 at +350.
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