Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Johnson Favored by LVH to Win His Sixth Fontana Race

Johnson loves California
LAS VEGAS -- The LVH SuperBook has posted Jimmie Johnson as the 6-to-1 favorite to win Sunday's Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., and for good reason. Johnson, who is from nearby El Cajon, is the track’s all-time leader with an insane 5.4 average finish in 18 starts. He's won at Fontana five times — another record — including the first win of his career.

If anything, the LVH odds on Johnson might be too generous. However, Johnson has gone three races without winning at Fontana, and he doesn't seem to have the decided edge in the Gen-6 car we may have previously thought. In fact, one driver we thought might struggle with new car this season was Brad Keselowski, yet he's leading in points and is the only driver to finish in the top five of all four races.

Keselowski is 8-to-1 this week, even though he has never finished better than 18th in four starts at Auto Club Speedway. His low odds this week are simply because he has proven to be good on an array of tracks this season.

Of the four tracks that have hosted Sprint Cup races this season, California figures to be most similar to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is banked steeper and is a half-mile shorter, but the key component here is horsepower, and Keselowski had plenty of it at Las Vegas, where he led four different times for 12 laps until settling for third-place.

Kasey Kahne led the most laps (114) at Vegas, but Matt Kenseth got the checkers. He's a three-time winner at Fontana — the last coming in 2009 — and it's pretty obvious he's got lots of JGR horsepower under the hood. Kenseth is 7-to-1, the co-second choice to win Sunday along with Kahne and teammate Kyle Busch.

An interesting look this week could be Carl Edwards at 10-to-1. Edwards has an 8.7 average finish at Fontana, second best to Johnson. Edwards won in 2008, and finished fifth last year, quite an accomplishment considering the junk Roush Racing gave him. He also finished fifth at Las Vegas two weeks ago.

Read More Here..... odds to win

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