NASCAR Odds, Homestead: More Kyle Larson; Round of 8 aims for Phoenix
I doubt a quiet week plays to Kyle Larson’s advantage. Not when you consider what he did last Sunday after spending midweek clinching a sprint-car championship and running well north of 200 mph in an Indy 500 rookie shakedown.
In the wake of that, Kyle’s NASCAR win at Las Vegas clinched his spot among the final four Cup championship hopefuls who — to borrow from another of Kyle’s hobbies — tee it up at Phoenix in a few weeks.
So, it stands to reason, Kyle will slip it into cruise control, play around with house money, and let the boys at the shop put together a flawless and fast machine for Phoenix.
And surely the smart-money folks know all that, right? Therefore, the odds board for this week’s Homestead affair will be tilting heavily from the weight of all that money on, say, Denny Hamlin and/or WIlliam Byron.
Right?
Um … right?
Well, guess what.
For some reason or ’nother, they’ve gone and made Kyle an even bigger favorite than he was at Vegas, where he took the green at +400, a 4-to-1 favorite to win even as he was coming off three finishes of 31st 15th and 13th.
It’s as if they know something we don’t.
This week, Kyle is carrying better than 3-to-1 odds to Homestead, listed midweek at +275, which is the type of number you might’ve seen from a mid-’60s Richard Petty or late-’90s Jeff Gordon.
It gets crazier. Kyle is listed at -150 for a top-3 and -250 (TWO FIFTY!) for a top-5. You’re netting way less than you wager at those odds.
But here we are, taking our weekly allotment of $100, split into a pair of $50 efforts — one on the win and one on a prop bet — and trying to recoup some of this year’s losses when it appears the winner has already been decided.
Well, I ain’t buying it!
Yeah, I can hear you..
“Hey, hoss, have you seen your purchasing record for this year?”
Seen it? Worse yet, I’ve felt it.
But this is no game for the timid, even those weighed down by bundles of worthless receipts.
Let’s go get some of it back. And for good luck (what could it hurt at this point?): boogity, boogity, boogity …
Favorites: The gamblers don’t consider Kyle Larson a gamble
Kyle Larson +275; Tyler Reddick +500; Martin Truex Jr. +550; Denny Hamlin +700; William Byron +750
Give me this group against the field, and I like my chances, even without asking Truex to gather a hankering for the smell of champagne again. He won’t, by the way.
Next batch: New life for Ryan Blaney
Kyle Busch +1,400; Christopher Bell +1,400; Ross Chastain +1,600; Ryan Blaney +1,800; Chase Elliott +1,800
Not sure if you’ve ever had a near-disaster experience and felt the adrenaline rush from surviving it. Well, how about Ryan Blaney’s playoff-killing penalty getting reversed? That’s not one of those. But it’s all relative, you know?
Can Kevin Harvick win a race named in his honor?
Chris Buescher +2,000; Brad Keselowski +2,000; Kevin Harvick +2,500; Bubba Wallace +2,800; Joey Logano +3,500; Ty Gibbs +4,000
Because they haven’t been fawning over the retiring Harvick quite enough, and maybe because they didn’t find a high-paying entitlement sponsor, they named this week's 4EVER 400 after Harvick’s going-away promo slogan.
The only other guys under +15,000!
Alex Bowman +5,500; Erik Jones +8,000; Daniel Suarez +8,000
What an amazing gap between Ty Gibbs and the longshots, with these three stragglers barely bridging the gap. Nothing to see here, quite frankly.
Long, longer and longest shots
John Hunter Nemechek +15,000; AJ Allmendinger +20,000; Aric Almirola +25,000; Ricky Stenhouse +40,000; Austin Cindric +50,000; Ryan Newman +100,000
You ever wonder what they pay a guy like Newman to keep stepping back into the fray to run a race where he has no chance of competing? Frankly, a long weekend in South Florida this time of year? Just pay my expenses! Kidding. I’d actually pay my own.
Some props
● Denny Hamlin is just +190 for a top-3 and -110 for a top-5, which sounds low but only if you never saw Larson’s odds for those finishes.
● Kyle Busch, who has come off the skids to post two straight third-place finishes, is offering +400 for a top-3! Also, +180 for a top-5.
● Among the matchups, we have Tyler Reddick vs. Martin Truex, both at -115.
● There’s also Brad Keselowski (-125) vs. Bubba Wallace (-105).
● Team props: Chevy is +105, Toyota +140, Ford +450.
Last week
Sensing I was so much smarter than the folks who drove down Kyle Larson’s odds at Vegas, I took Denny Hamlin and he finished 10th. He was sniffing around it for much of the day, but smells don’t pay.
About midway through last Sunday’s race, Alex Bowman crashed out and finished 35th in a starting field of 36.
Needless to say, he was my prop bet for a top-5.
This week
A few times this season, after another “winning” pick went bad, I’ve assumed I was simply off by a week and picked the same driver the following week.
“How’d that work out?” you ask.
“Not too good.”
But you know how it goes. Now I’m simply afraid to abandon that occasional thought process, for fear it’ll finally happen and drive me into the world of the fearful who sit on their wallets.
That’s right, give me Denny Hamlin at that +700, which would bring in $350 on the $50 allotment.
Correction: WILL bring in $350.
For the prop, I’ll kinda-sorta double down on Denny and take Team Toyota at +140, which would net another $70 for a total of $420 of claw-back cash in this season of dwindling chances — and bank accounts.
