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| Sunday's Las Vegas race will be most bet race of 2020 in Nevada. |
While several of the top drivers crashed out at Daytona, Denny Hamlin won the Great American Race for the second consecutive year and third time in five years. In addition to paying out at 10/1 odds for the win, he also won every match-up posted on him and stayed under 10.5 on the finish position prop. His driving skills late in the race showed why he’s the best Daytona driver active in the series. He got an extra jolt of speed by side-drafting and maneuvering the air at least four times on the last lap alone.
Hamlin has now assured himself of a playoff berth and has a huge weight lifted off his shoulders and can free-roll the rest of the way with no pressure. It’s the second straight year like that after going winless for the first time in career in 2018. Last season after his Daytona 500 win he’d go on to win five more races, but failed in the last race at Homestead attempting to win his first season title.
“Our team is picking up where we left off last year and really clicking so far,” Hamlin said. “I’m very happy with our performance, but we still have a lot of work to do and a lot more challenges coming our way. We’ll be ready to get back at it this weekend in Las Vegas and hopefully take the checkered flag.”
A win at Las Vegas has eluded Hamlin in 16 Cup starts with a 13th-place average finish and only two top-fives. But the good news for him is that he won three times using this week’s race package that features engines with 550 horsepower, aero ducts, and a tall spoiler. Not a lot has changed with the package on these tracks for 2020 and Hamlin has the same crew so there’s reason to suggest Hamlin might even be better than last season with less tinkering to do unlike was the case when it was new in 2019. Hamlin won on 1.5-mile tracks at Kansas and Texas last season.
Hamlin being winless at Las Vegas falls in line with an active trend that has seen 17 of the past 19 Las Vegas winners coming from former Cup Champions, including the last 10 overall. If you’ve been betting longshots each Cup race in Vegas, you haven’t been cashing. No winner at LVMS has paid out at odds higher than 20/1.
Being good at tracks like Las Vegas is usually the gateway to a championship.
“It’s crucial to really excel at the intermediate tracks, said Aric Almirola who is 80/1 win at Las Vegas. “We have so many of them on the schedule and, if you can get them figured out, they can make a huge impact on your season. We’ve seen it so many times where teams get something figured out at those tracks. Those teams start running up front every weekend. If you look at the schedule, most of the tracks on the circuit are intermediate tracks and the most important races if you’re in the hunt for a championship.”
In the 18 races last season using this week’s race package, 11 of them were won by drivers who made the Championship 4 at Homestead.
Last season this race package was dominated early on by Team Penske winning at Atlanta with Brad Keselowski and then the following week by Joey Logano in Las Vegas. Keselowski would win at Kansas in May and Logano would win at Michigan in June. But then it was like a switch flipped and everyone else got better and a Penske car wouldn’t win with this race package again spanning the final 10 races with it.
So the question coming in is whether or not Team Penske can reclaim their dominance with this package, or could it be something specific about Las Vegas’ layout that gives them an edge every year because they always seem to have the perfect set-up. Keselowski and Logano have combined to win four of the last eight LVMS races with Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. each winning twice over that span.
READ MORE HERE....TOP-5 FINISH PREDICTION ON VEGASINSIDER.COM
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