Shriners Children’s 500 Odds & Picks: NASCAR Phoenix Raceway Best Bets

The starting grid is set for the season’s first short track race, and drivers are ready to take on Phoenix Raceway in a potential Championship preview. So let’s dive into all the pre-race happenings ahead of the green flag dropping with the Shriners Children’s 500 Odds and picks.

Shriners Children’s 500 Odds and Picks

Quoting former Philadelphia 76ers superstar Allen Iverson: “We talkin’ about Practice! Not a game…, we talkin about practice! Why yes we are, and it’s glorious. The NASCAR Cup Series held a 50-minute practice session on Friday night, allowing drivers to test the new short-track package in race conditions. And the response from drivers was not what NASCAR wanted to hear.

Every driver asked about how the new package raced compared to the previous iteration said it was either the same or in Tyler Reddick’s opinion: “exponentially worse”. And while Chase Elliott was a little less openly critical with his response, it was probably even more disparaging. The driver of the HMS No. 9 car said he forgot they even made a change to the short-track package until it was brought up in the media center. Yikes!

Practice & Qualifying

Practice and qualifying produced some interesting results and like last spring, they didn’t exactly match each other. Joey Logano posted the top single-lap speed on Friday but only picked up about a tenth in qualifying, while most of the field got significantly faster. As a result, Logano will be starting 23rd for the Shriners Children’s 500 on Sunday.

The star of practice was Christopher Bell who was far and away the best car, dropping the top 15, 20, 25, & 30-lap averages, with the latter being better than 15 other drivers’ 15-lap averages. Unlike the No. 22 car though, he improved his best lap by almost a full half-second and just missed out on a top 10 starting spot. He will be firing off 13th for the race.

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As I alluded to in opening this section, top practice speeds weren’t an indicator of who would qualify well. Just four drivers inside the top 10 of best speeds in practice wound up qualifying on the front five rows. This is similar to last season where only three practice speed demons went green inside the top 10.

One of the drivers who did back up his practice was your Shriners Children’s 500 pole-sitter Denny Hamlin. The 11-car bested fellow JGR driver Ty Gibbs for the No. 1 spot by almost a full tenth in the final round. It’s Hamlin’s third pole here at Phoenix Raceway and his 41st career pole award.

Shriners Children’s 500 Odds

The pre-practice and qualifying Shriners Children’s 500 Odds have changed quite a bit since cars hit the track this weekend and we have a new favorite in Denny Hamlin. Interestingly, he’s the only driver we’ve heard say the new short-track package is “better” than its predecessor. Unlike the Pennzoil 400 Odds from Las Vegas last week where Kyle Larson closed around +350, Denny is still at a price that won’t scare bettors away. So let’s take a look at the new outright odds from DraftKings Sportsbook

Phoenix Raceway Trends to watch

• The last 13 winners in Phoenix all started 13th or better
• Nobody starting on the front row has won the spring race since Kevin Harvick in 2015 and that’s the only such occurrence over the last 15.

Shriners Children’s 500 Picks

Chase Elliott said that he thinks, no matter the practice length or change in package, all the guys who have been good here in Phoenix will still be the top contenders today. While assessing the practice data, keeping that in mind has helped focus my attention on my favorite bets to make while shopping Shriners Children’s 500 odds.

*Odds Current at the time of writing

Ryan Blaney -105 Over Kyle Larson (Caesars) 3u

This matchup and its odds are dictated by name value and recency bias as much as expected performance if you ask me. Kyle Larson has been really good in Phoenix and has a win here. But I’d argue that Blaney is the better of the two in the desert.

Ryan hasn’t grabbed a checkered flag on this track but has top 5s in five of the last six races here which are two more than anyone else. And his average finish of 4th is four spots better than the next-best driver over that span.

Meanwhile, Larson has finishes of 5th or better in half of the last six in Phoenix including both races last year. In those races, however, it was Blaney with the better finishing spot still.

If history isn’t enough to sway you towards the 12 car, how about the fact he edged Larson in qualifying, and posted better splits in each 5-lap segment that both ran? I’m not saying this will be an easy victory, nor is it something I’d mortgage the house for. But to list the most successful active driver at Phoenix as an underdog against someone who looked worse in Practice and qualified behind him is Ludacris. I’d bet this up to -120.

Drivers to Lead a Lap – Under 8.5 -115 (Caesars) 2u

The amount of legit frontrunners in the desert has always been small and we’re likely destined to see maybe two to three dominant cars lead the majority of laps. This leaves just scraps for any remaining drivers on slightly different pit strategies. Going back to the 2020 season, this prop has gone over just two times, and it’s never happened in the Next Gen car. If driving in traffic is as bad, and passing as hard as drivers have indicated, I expect to see just a handful of leaders.

Shriners Children’s 500 at NASCAR Phoenix Raceway Best Bet

Ross Chastain Top 5 +175 (BetRivers) 2u

I liked this number when it was around +140 early in the week and I now love it post-qualifying. Ross has been on a mission this season and had it not been for penalties the previous two weeks, or his wreck coming to the white in Daytona, he might already have multiple victories.

Chastain got better and better during practice on Friday, posting the 4th-best 15-lap average, and then the 3rd-best 20-lap average. Regarding qualifying, he’s never been great at it, and I think it’s important to note that Ross has said they’re looking for race pace, not qualifying speed when unloading this season. So a spot on row 6 should actually make people even more optimistic about his potential.

Not only has he been one of the best cars here in Phoenix, cashing this ticket in three of the last four Phoenix races. He is coming off a start to 2024 where he’s been a legit top 5 contender in every race. There was no question this was going to be my Shriners Children’s 500 Odds best bet.

*Bonus Bet(s): Ross Chastain Top 3 +290 and To Win +1000 are fun additions on a driver I think can go back to back in the desert.