Thursday, April 23, 2020

eNASCAR iRacing Betting Preview: Talladega Superspeedway

William Byron has won the last two eNASCAR races.
Byron favored to win three straight iRacing events

William Byron has won the past two races in the iRacing Pro Invitational Series which features mostly NASCAR Cup Series regulars, but I’m betting his streak comes to an end this week at the virtual Talladega Superspeedway. 

Betting on a driver not to win is something Circa Sports in downtown Las Vegas has brought to the table weekly with the favored drivers. Because of Byron’s popularity with quarantined bettors using the mobile app, his odds won’t be higher than +365 at Circa which means the No price will be around -500, a number that deserves to be bet.

Byron has had the luxury of getting out front on shorts tracks the last two weeks and between the four races in the Pro Series, he’s led 318 laps. The next closest driver in laps led is Ryan Preece with 67. Talladega won’t be as easy. In fact, it will be difficult for him to even finish.

2020 iRACING Pro Invitational Series
Results Winners

Race 1, March 22 - Homestead-Miami Speedway, Denny Hamlin
Race 2, March 29 - Texas Motor Speedway, Timmy Hill
Race 3, April 5 - Bristol Motor Speedway, William Byron
Race 4, April 19 - Richmond, William Byron

Of course, this is all speculation. I’m learning about eNASCAR racing each week. A driver like Byron appears to have a huge edge, but the races are short, and he has the best car. But just like in the real NASCAR world, Talladega’s 2.66-mile high-banked layout with three and sometimes four-wide racing is the equalizer.

Byron won’t be able to get out front and lead the entire 150 miles, or 57 laps. And he’ll be lucky if he even finishes because the nature of the track swallows up the best of the best. And Byron is the best of the best in this series. But instead of being +190 like the last two weeks, he’s +365 this week and it’s because of the beastly Talladega layout.

But Byron should probably be offered at a higher price despite his virtual performance looking like Jeff Gordon’s real No. 24 from 1998.

Let’s go back and look at the odds to win the Daytona 500 and last fall’s Talladega races in the Cup Series. No driver was listed lower than 10-to-1 in the Daytona 500 and five-time Talladega winner Brad Keselowski was an 8-to-1 favorite at Talladega in October.

In real NASCAR, drivers don’t get one restart like they do in the iRacing Pro Series. But I’m betting that other than that the racing will be similar to how it is in the real world at Talladega. This means we’ll have a crapshoot and just about any of the drivers can win, except for maybe Jeff Gordon who was added to the entry list as a late entry.

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