NASCAR Odds, Picks & Best Bets For The Daytona 500

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14 February 2024

NASCAR Odds, Picks & Best Bets For The Daytona 500

It’s been just over 100 days since Ryan Blaney claimed his first NASCAR Cup Series championship, and the circuit is ready to spark back to action once again. That means the Daytona 500, the first, biggest, and sometimes craziest race of the year, one where sports bettors can have their hopes scuttled by the Big One—or cash in after an underdog victory on .

The latter has certainly been the case recently. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who claimed last season’s Daytona 500 as a +3500 underdog, was the third consecutive long-odds winner of the Great American Race, following +10000 Michael McDowell in 2023 and +3000 Austin Cindric in 2022. Add +5000 winner Austin Dillon in 2018, and that’s four times in the past six years that the Daytona 500 champion has produced a big potential payday for bettors.

Denny Hamlin, though, will have none of this. A three-time Daytona 500 champion, Hamlin is once again the favorite in Sunday’s 200-lap race around 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway, where he instilled some calm amid the mayhem by going back-to-back in 2019 and 2020. But he’s also finished 37th and 17th in his last two Daytona 500 starts—such is life in an event governed by aerodynamics and courage, and where almost anyone in the starting field has a chance to win.

Cup Series Daytona 500 Odds

Cup Series Daytona 500 Race Betting Tips

Why can the Daytona 500 be so crazy, and why don’t the best drivers always win? Indeed, it seems strange to potentially have a +10000 entrant win the biggest event in NASCAR, like the New York Jets crashing the NFL playoffs and seizing the Super Bowl trophy. But the Daytona track is so big, the air almost has a life of its own.

It’s that air, traveling around cars going 200 mph, that ultimately determines who can pass, which lane of cars is moving faster, and who can make a move to try and win the race.

The aerodynamics at work in Daytona effectively remove the inherent skill advantage that elite drivers have at almost every other track, which is why huge underdogs can win the Daytona 500. Of course, knowing how to maneuver in those moving columns of air is a skill set unto itself, and some drivers like Hamlin are very good at it. So is +1800 Bubba Wallace, who’s finished as high as second in the 500. So is Dillon, this year carrying +3000 odds, who in 2022 also won the Daytona summertime race to go along with his Daytona 500 triumph from four years earlier.

Blaney, the reigning series champion, is pretty good at Daytona himself—he won the track’s summer race in 2021, and has finished as high as second in the 500. Chris Buescher has three top-five finishes in the Daytona 500 to go along with a victory jn the summertime event. And then there are the great drivers who’ve largely been frustrated by the Daytona 500, a list that includes Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch. Amid all that moving air, they can do only so much.

Cup Series Daytona 500 Best Bets

Brad Keselowski to Win

Odds:

Keselowski is likely the most accomplished driver in the Daytona 500 field without a victory in the Great American Race. The former series champion has had great runs there, finishing ninth in 2022, third in 2014, and fourth in 2013. He effectively pushed his teammate Buescher to victory in last season’s Daytona summertime event.

It’s taken a while for the team he now co-owns with Jack Roush to get up to speed, but the performance late last season was clearly there. It all comes down to being in the right place at the right time on Sunday.

Denny Hamlin Top 3

Odds:

Hamlin is the greatest superspeedway driver of his era, and it shows at Daytona, where he has more victories (three), more top-five finishes (13) and more laps led than any other competitor of his era.

He’s in a bit of a Daytona rut now, with double-digit finishes in five straight Daytona events, taking into account both the 500 and the 400-mile summer race. But the potential is always there; this is a guy, after all, who finished third, first, first and fifth in four straight Daytona 500s from 2018 through 2021, a ridiculous degree of consistency on a highly capricious track.

Bubba Wallace Top 5

Odds:

Who owns the best career average finish at Daytona? It’s not Hamlin, not Keselowski, not Blaney—it’s Wallace, whose average of 12.9 over 13 starts is far better than that of the next-best driver with at least 10 Daytona starts (Alex Bowman, 16.1).

Wallace has led laps in four of his last five Daytona races, including 12 in the 2022 event where he finished second. His 23IX Racing car is co-owned by Hamlin, who clearly knows his way around the place. Wallace is due for a big breakthrough, and Daytona would be the perfect place.