NASCAR Cup Series at Las Vegas odds, picks, preview: Kyle Busch emerging as early season favorite

NASCAR heads to another speedway race this weekend for the Pennzoil 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Kyle Busch is the betting favorite after winning last week in Fontana.

Busch and Chase Elliott are the co-favorites to win the Cup Series championship, both with +600 odds. Kyle Larson is right behind at +700.

Las Vegas is a 1.5-mile track that Busch won on in 2009. Of drivers in this year’s field, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano have won twice in Vegas.

Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck, The Athletic’s motorsports reporters, previewed this weekend’s race in Las Vegas and made predictions for race winner.

Kyle Busch (+550) is this week’s favorite. Is last week’s win enough to justify him as an early season frontrunner?

Bianchi: Winning on an intermediate track like Auto Club Speedway is a good barometer for a team’s potential the remainder of the season as speed there is usually transferable to speed on tracks like Las Vegas. So to think Busch will be a factor this Sunday isn’t a stretch at all; in fact, he should be the favorite when you take into consideration he’s a former winner here (2009), has the most top-10 finishes and third-best average finish. And he’s also not lacking in motivation as he’s a Las Vegas native.

Gluck: To build off Jordan’s point, Busch was in position to win the Vegas race one year ago until a caution came out with a few laps to go and he got beat by the Hendrick Motorsports cars’ tire strategy in overtime. Busch has been fast every week so far this season (the Clash at the Coliseum, Daytona 500 and Fontana), so the team is clearly on top of its game already. Even if you hadn’t told me Busch was the favorite in the odds, I’d have said he was the one to beat entering this weekend.

Last season Chase Elliott had the most wins, led the most laps and finished the regular season with the most points. Even after a second-place finish last week he’s +1100 to win this weekend, behind five drivers. Is he being undervalued?

Bianchi: While all those statistics are noteworthy, when you dig deeper you come to the realization that Elliott hasn’t had much success lately on intermediate tracks – thus his excited (for him) reaction last week after finishing second to Busch. Something else to note is that Las Vegas has not historically been Elliott’s best track as in 12 starts he has just three top-five and five top-10 finishes. All that said, he’s an elite driver with an elite team and they’re capable of winning anywhere on any given week, so if you can get him at +1100 that’s tremendous value.

Gluck: I’m a lot colder on Elliott at Vegas than Jordan is. Last fall, to open the third round of the playoffs, the No. 9 team struggled at Vegas and finished 21st with no apparent mechanical problems. Elliott said afterward it was an “all-around poor effort on my behalf.” He’s that low in the odds for a reason. Still, I certainly wouldn’t dismiss his chances of winning altogether; it’s just if they figured it out and ended up in victory lane, that would be quite a turnaround from less than five months ago.

Is Las Vegas Motor Speedway close enough to last week’s track in Fontana that we could see similar cars in the mix?

Bianchi: Though it’s just two races into the season – one of which was on a superspeedway – it certainly feels like we have a good idea on who the players are going to be this year, at least through the early part of the season. As things presently stand, drivers within this group include: Busch, Elliott, Ross Chastain, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Kevin Harvick and Alex Bowman.

Gluck: Chevrolet cars finished 1-2-3-4 at Fontana, which was quite the opening statement for the first real race of the season. I’d lean toward a Chevy again on Sunday, whether that’s Busch, Chastain or one of the Hendrick drivers. It’s very early to make such a leap, but if Chevy flexes its muscle again this week, it’s going to send Ford and Toyota scrambling for answers before the West Coast Swing is even completed.

What longshots do you think have a chance in this race?

Bianchi: Austin Cindric at 80-to-1 is intriguing when you consider Team Penske typically brings fast cars to Las Vegas. Another name is Brad Keselowski (40-1), whose three Las Vegas wins are tied with Logano for track-best and who had a fast car at ACS and rallied to still finish seventh after contact with another car dropped him a lap down.

Gluck: People are going to be overlooking Austin Dillon (+4000) in the early part of this season, but that’s a mistake. Busch will keep elevating Richard Childress Racing’s program and by working closely with Dillon, the elder Childress grandson could jump up and contend for some wins. Dillon got a quiet top-10 last week at Fontana and hasn’t finished worse than 13th in his last four Vegas starts. If he and the No. 3 team can put together a solid day, he could be in contention at the end.

Who is your pick to win the race? 

Bianchi: Martin Truex Jr. (+1200) is long overdue to return to victory lane in points race for the first time since Sept. 11, 2021. And Las Vegas is a good track for him to do just that: His Joe Gibbs Racing team has speed on intermediate tracks, he’s a two-time winner there and owns the second-best average finish among active drivers.

Gluck: Are we just going to pretend Chastain (+800) doesn’t exist? He had one of the two fastest cars last week at Fontana and his two Vegas finishes in 2022 were third and second, respectively. He also led a combined 151 laps between the two Vegas races last season. If people are somehow still sleeping on Chastain, I don’t know what to tell them.