Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Jeff Gordon the 4-to-1 favorite to win at Kansas for fourth time

Kevin Harvick should be the driver to beat this week
Jeff Gordon won the May 10 race at Kansas Speedway and is the track's all-time leader with three wins, so it makes sense that the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook posts him as the 4-to-1 favorite to win Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400. With four wins on the season already, Gordon has also been readjusted as the 5-to-2 favorite to win his fifth Sprint Cup Championship.

There have been seven races on 1.5-mile tracks this season and there are four more to go including Sunday's race. Brad Keselowski has won three of them, but Kevin Harvick comes in with the next lowest odds at 9-to-2 while Keselowski is posted at 5-to-1. Only Penske Racing and Hendrick Motorsports drivers have won on this type of track this season, but Harvick has been as close to winning as you can get without actually doing so.

Harvick won this race while driving for Richard Childress last season and led a race-high 119 laps in the May event before settling for second. Two weeks later, he led 100 laps in the Coca-Cola 600 before again settling for second. At Atlanta on Aug. 31, he led a race-high 195 laps before Paul Menard rubbed him out and ruined his chance for victory. The Chase started two weeks after that at Chicago, and Harvick led a race-high 79 laps before he got passed by Keselowski with 16 laps to go and had to settle for fifth. Last week on the 1-mile concrete layout at Dover, he led 223 of the 400 laps, but a cut tire ruined his chances to taste victory for the first time since Darlington in April.

Harvick has been one of the fastest on just about every type of track during practices, he's sat on the pole seven times, and he's been runner-up six times since his last win. It's a fair assumption that he'll be fast again this week, and the breaks are going to go his way eventually.

“We expect to be fast and just need to have some good luck," said Harvick in his weekly press release. "That is really what it's all about for us. The car will be fast, it's just about getting it all to come together.”

The chassis he's using this week has a very good resume. In three starts, it's finished second three times -- at Kansas and both Michigan races.

Jimmie Johnson has the best average finish (7.6) at Kansas, along with two wins -- the last in 2011. He also has one of the wins on a 1.5-mile track this season (Charlotte), but he doesn't appear to be in the same class as Gordon, Keselowski or Harvick. This is normally the time of year Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus show off their advantages over the rest of the field, but we haven't seen it yet. It's only out of pure respect for his past that he comes at 6-to-1 odds this week.

Read More Here.....Westgate Kansas Odds to Win

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