Another week and another winner. The NASCAR Best Bets are running hot and what better place to bet than Las Vegas? The plan is simple: Watch the races, take notes and analyze the lap-by-lap data. From there, picking the race winner and the head-to-head winners is a walk in the park or a cruise in a low horsepower, high downforce stock car that is glued to a high-banked intermediate track.
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Kyle Larson to Win (+350)
The payout isn’t great, but that’s because the result is inevitable. In the spring race at Las Vegas, Larson led over 100 laps, recorded one-quarter of the fast laps and won convincingly. At a similar race track in Kansas, Larson led 132 laps and recorded almost one-third of the fast laps, but finished 19th because of manufactured cautions in one of the most poorly officiated races in recent memory. That being said, wild restarts in the 550 package (low horsepower, high downforce) and NASCAR’s admission two years ago that they were in the entertainment business not the sports business, means that Larson is not a lock and a long shot winner can pull off the upset, if NASCAR is desperate for “action.”
Sometimes NASCAR is glad to run a professional and honest organization that might bore some fans with long green-flag runs to the finish — Larson led 327 of 400 laps in the 550 package at Charlotte — and other times NASCAR likes to mix it up. At Kansas, they allowed a tire to sit on pit road and refused to throw a caution despite the exact same situation happening at the very same race track two years prior, but that time, NASCAR did throw the yellow flag to remove the potentially dangerous debris. Top ranking executives claimed NASCAR did not want to influence this spring’s race, so they chose to influence the race by intentionally not influencing the race. Tire situation aside, NASCAR quickly pulled the trigger for a late race caution when Denny Hamlin got into the wall at Kansas, but then several laps later, chose not to order a caution when Kyle Larson got into the wall in a potentially more dangerous situation.
If NASCAR stays out of this, then hammer Kyle Larson. If NASCAR goes Vince McMahon, then play the long shots. The long shot bet is tempting, but betting on honesty is the right thing to do.
Ross Chastain to Win (+6000)
Let’s be greedy and pretend that NASCAR executives lack virtue or they err on the side of caution by waving the yellow flag late in the race. There could be an actual event that warrants a legitimate caution as well, but in any case, that means chaos. The current NASCAR stock cars cannot get going in the 550 package and Las Vegas is a wide enough track for the drivers to get really stupid at the end, and no one is stupider than Ross Chastain. On restarts, Chastain has been certifiably mad — he drove three wide, dipping below the white line at New Hampshire! The Hendrick engines that CGR uses have been noticeably stronger in the 750 package, but Kurt Busch won the the last 1.5 mile race for CGR in a 550 package engine. In May, Chastain had a top 10 car at Kansas at times, and that’s good enough to put him in position to benefit from the possible chaos at the end of the race. As the odds indicate, that’s the only way that Chastain wins, but last fall’s Las Vegas race ended with chaos.
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Matt DiBenedetto to Win (+5000)
NASCAR catches a lot of flack for when they do and do not throw the caution. That’s the way it has always been and will always be. Fans aren’t conspiratorial tinfoil hat wearing crack pots for suggesting that NASCAR manipulates finishes and the NASCAR executives are not new world order elitist managing the great reset of stock car racing. The truth is that although the first caution may be questionable, the next three in the sequence are on the drivers. They do not have to drive like lunatics on restarts — they can choose to accept that they have a 15th place car. That does not happen, and that’s how Matt DiBenedetto nearly won at Las Vegas last September — ultimately finishing second. If you place this bet, then don’t bother watching until the very end. Cross your fingers and hope for a couple wild restarts.
Austin Dillon (+5000)
It sounds great, but do the long shots really have a chance? Even if a green race turns wacky at the end, doesn’t one of the favorites still win? No. At Kentucky last summer, Cole Custer was in 14th place and completely out of the picture with 23 laps to go, but three cautions later, he was doing burnouts on the front stretch. Also last summer, a late race caution set the stage for a classic RCR gamble. With help from their racing software — Rho AI — Dillon surprisingly took two tires and was able to hold off faster cars and earned the win in the 550 package race at Texas.
RCR uses the same Hendrick engines that are dominating the sport, and Dillon has an advantage that most of the Hendrick cars do not have — he can gamble. Points mean nothing to Dillon because he is not in the playoffs and as demonstrated last summer at Texas, this team will take chances to win races. Joey Logano won the spring 2020 Las Vegas race by staying out on two tires for the final restart while the rest of the contenders pitted for fresh tires.
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