Martinsville Betting Preview: 2017 STP 500

The Virginian, Denny Hamlin, has five wins at Martinsville.

Kyle Larson has only one win this season and two career Cup wins while in his fourth season, but I'm getting the feeling it he's going to have double-digit wins and possibly end up with a championship. He's got a 1998 Jeff Gordon look about him so far.

Larson kept his incredible start to 2017 going Sunday at Fontana with a win following three consecutive second-place finishes and he's got Las Vegas taking notice. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook as the 6/1 co-favorite (Bet $100 to win $600) with four other drivers to win NASCAR's Cup Series Championship. He's right there on the same plateau as Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick. Jimmie Johnson, who won his seventh title last season, is listed at 8/1 odds. That is some serious respect given to Larson, and well deserved.

Double-digit wins by Larson may be a bit of an exaggeration by me, but it's clear at this early juncture that Larson and Martin Truex Jr. have the new low downforce package figured out the best on the tracks where it makes the biggest impact.

Three of the five races so far have been tracks where the package means everything and there are still nine more races on 1.5-mile tracks and two more at Michigan's 2-mile layout. Joe Gibbs Racing has been a little sluggish so far on these tracks after dominating on them the past two seasons. The new Toyota Camry body design may have something to do with JGR's slow start, but Truex is using the same equipment and same body design and doesn't seem to have the same problems as his four defacto teammates.

This weekend at Martinsville, we can clean the slate on data accumulated between races at Atlanta, Las Vegas and Fontana. The low downforce package will have little effect on the outcome on the flat half-mile layout. This track usually has the same group of guys winning on it twice a year. When looking back the past 14 years of Martinsville results, four drivers combined to win 22 of the 28 races.

Two of those four drivers have retired in the past two seasons. Jeff Gordon had nine wins all-time there while Tony Stewart had three, which leaves Jimmie Johnson (nine wins) and Denny Hamlin (five wins) as the lone Martinsville dominators in what is obviously the dawning of a new era in NASCAR. The door is left open for some new blood to jump into the Martinsville mix.

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