Coke Zero 400 Betting Preview: Drivers don't hold true ratings with plates on

Rush hour on the freeway at 200 mph.

LAS VEGAS -- One week after seeing an average speed at 80 mph at Sonoma where the drivers made left and right turns on the road course, the Sprint Cup Series takes it up a notch with speeds at over 200 mph at Daytona International Speedway this Saturday night for the Coke Zero 400. It's all left turns, it's real fast and the restrictor-plates make almost all the cars equal meaning that up to 35 of the 40 drivers can realistically win.

Through 16 races we've seen 11 different winners, and all of them are candidates to win this week. To start the handicapping process you'll want to look at what happened during Daytona Speedweeks in February and then you'll also want to include what happened May 1 at Talladega Superspeedway. Daytona and Talladega race very different from each other, but since they're the only two tracks that use the plate package, it's a good measuring tool.

Or, maybe better yet for handicapping Daytona, you just throw some darts or pull a car number out of a hat. The randomness of cars getting involved in another drivers mess is greater for the two plate race tracks. They go rows of cars with side-by-side racing at insane speeds and when one car wiggles just a bit it can take out dozen cars easy. There's just no where for the drivers to go when this happens.

Because of that randomness and the cars being equal, you're going to get nice odds on just about every driver, or at least the top drivers that are usually in the 8/1 range. If looking to get someone like Danica Patrick at 500/1 odds, you're out of luck this week. All the regular long shots have their odds reduced to around 60/1 just because they really can win. Even Danica can win. It's her best shot -- she's finished eighth twice at Daytona.

Now I certainly won't have a ticket on Danica to win, but she's the perfect example of how anyone can win. We've seen the likes of Trevor Bayne, David Ragan and Aric Almirola all win at Daytona since 2011. Ragan's other career Cup win came at Talladega in 2013 and he was pushed to the front by teammate David Gilliland who finished second -- a spectacular exacta if we had that.

Side Note: Nevada sports books will actually have pools like horse races for NASCAR races by football season as US Fantasy has been approved by the state to take Fantasy-type wagers at sports books. The take-out in the pools are expected to be much better than horse racing with only 10 percent juice to be divided between the book operators and US Fantasy. More on that developing story in a few weeks.

Read More Here....Top-5 Finish Prediction on VegasInsider.com