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The Nascar Cup Series concludes its regular season this Saturday night with the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the Daytona International Speedway. The green flag is scheduled to drop around 7 pm et for the scheduled 160-lap race that will decide the final two playoff entrants. Odds for superspeedway races don’t move very much after qualifying so I headed back to Fanduel Sportsbook early and found my favorite bets to make ahead of the race. See our betting results from The Glen and my Coke Zero Sugar 400 card with my best bet below.
See my Go Bowling at The Glen article here
Coke Zero Sugar 400 Betting Card
Top 10 Finish: Chris Buescher +130
His last three results at Daytona are extremely deceiving as they included
- 13th place finish at last season’s 500 due to the DVP (damaged vehicle policy) just 14 laps into the race
- 40th after being DQ’d from the 2nd position from post-race inspection during this race last year
- 16th place finish at the 500 this year after being caught up in a wreck while running 2nd with just 5 laps remaining by teammate Brad Keselowski.
Buescher has top 10 finishes in 4 (T-5th most) of the last 14 SS races. He is tied with the most Top 10 finishes (5) over the last ten races at Daytona. Has the 9th best average finish of 17th during that stretch here. Lastly, comes into tomorrow night, with THREE T10’s over the last four races of the season.
Driver Matchup: Denny Hamlin +102 Over Chase Elliott
Plus money on a driver matchup is always tasty, especially this one at a Super Speedway?! DUH!
Elliott has a T10 in four straight races at Daytona while Hamlin has two straight finishes of 13th or worse
But diving deeper, you notice Hamlin got caught up in the same wreck that caused Elliott to finish 10th here last fall and was collected during the first wreck of the 500 this season.
The level of success at Daytona isn’t really that close either. Hamlin has THREE career wins here to Elliott’s zero. FIVE T5’s to Chase’s two over the last 10 races here. And, ignoring his DQ at Pocono, Denny has finished ahead of Chase in the last three oval races entering tomorrow night.
Outright: Bubba Wallace +1000
Do I really have to choose someone here?! Haha, just joking, of course I am! Bubba opened the week closer to 12/1 and his odds have been shrinking all week. There is a big reason too.
- Top avg. finish of 12.5 at Daytona among drivers with 5+ races here
- Finished runner-up at this race last season and the Daytona 500 this year
- First and only career win came at Talladega last season
Bubba is also driving as well as he ever has currently. He has an avg. finish of 9th during five races prior to his suspension issue last week at Watkins Glen coming into Saturday night. That string of success has put him in a great position for tomorrow as well. He gets into the playoffs with a victory!
Coke Zero Sugar 400 Best Bet: Michael McDowell Top 10 +175
These odds are simply ridiculous! McDowell has Top 10 finishes in both TRUE (excludes Atlanta) superspeedway races this season. He has 6 total T10 finishes at superspeedways since 2019 which is tied with Kevin Harvick for 3rd most. McD won the Daytona 500 with outright odds of around +3500 last season. And over his last 10 races at Daytona:
- has the 3rd highest avg. finish of 13th
- Tied with four others for the most Top 10’s with 5
- Only TWO finishes worse than 14th
Michael has been great here, and has really impressed of late. Considering all these factors, these odds make almost no sense to me, as just 12 drivers are longer shots than him to finish top 10.
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Featured Image credit: Sean Gardner/Getty Images