It’s only fitting that NASCAR’s fourth stop on the schedule is at the gambling capital of the world because the first three races have produced the highest odds total ever with three improbable winners.
It’s the first Las Vegas NASCAR weekend of 2021 with Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 and the most exciting news is that fans will be allowed to attend at 20% capacity after no fans were allowed in the fall Vegas race last season. Things are slowly getting back to normal living under a pandemic, but the winners from the first three races are anything but normal.
NASCAR CUP BETTING RESOURCES
PENNZOIL 400 PICKS
Date: Sunday, March 7, 2021
TV-Time: FOX, 3:00 p.m. ET
Venue: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
2021 FILLED WITH LONG SHOTS!
The Daytona 500 was won by Michael McDowell at 65/1 odds and the Daytona road course race was won by Christopher Bell at a whopping 80/1 odds.
First-time NASCAR winners in the first two races for the first time since 1950.
And then last week at Homestead, William Byron led a race-high 102 laps won his second career Cup race, and paid out at 25/1 odds.
Never ever have I seen anything like it and I’ve been creating NASCAR odds since Jeff Gordon was a rookie.
Last season we saw Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin combine to win 16 of the 36 races with a set-up edge they kept quiet about all season. They were the best with all three race packages. Everyone else was way behind, especially with the 550 horsepower package used on the larger tracks. Hamlin and Harvick won 11 of the 20 races using it. Neither of them has won yet.
I think the secret is out of the bag because there were some wild things happening at Homestead last week using the 550 HP package. New blood has been injected into the series from old teams that had struggled to keep up with Joe Gibbs and Stewart-Haas Racing teams.
BALANCED COMPETITION
The Ford camp has helped McDowell (6th last week) and Roush Fenway Racing be competitive again.
Roush’s Ryan Newman was seventh at Homestead and Chris Buescher led 57 laps, the second-most while winning the first stage and finished sixth in the second stage. Buescher looked like the best car in the first third of the race and then fell back to 19th-place after the sun went down.
Harvick was an ordinary fifth and Hamlin was 11th at Homestead and neither led a lap.
But it wasn’t just the Fords that found new speed.
It was Chevrolet as well with Hendrick Motorsports leading the way with three top-10 finishes and their best, last season's Cup Champion, Chase Elliott finishing 14th. They won two races with this week’s package last season and they’re already 1-for-1 with it in 2021.
Hendrick also produces for Chip Ganassi Racing drivers Kurt Busch and Ross Chastain as well as the JTG Daugherty drivers (Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 13th last week).
The ECR engines also worked well for Richard Childress Racing as Tyler Reddick was runner-up and the fastest driver on the track rim-riding in the final stages of the race when it became dark and Austin Dillon was 12th.
Even Daniel Suarez had a solid 15th-place finish using the ECR engines in his No. 99 Chevrolet co-owned by rapper Pitbull.
The bottom line is that we all have to change our betting strategies on these types of tracks with the 550 HP to include more candidates to win. 2020 is gone. There is parity now like I haven’t seen in ages. We can include up to 20 drivers with a legitimate chance to win this week instead of the usual crop of 10 or 12.
HANDICAPPING NASCAR AT LAS VEGAS
I’m chasing a betting strategy and willing to adapt on the fly and not rely so much on what happened last season.
The Homestead race showed me so much that I didn’t see last year and I’m relying on it heavily this week even though the two 1.5-mile layouts are vastly different.
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