Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona: NASCAR betting odds show some enticing underdogs
One great thing about gambling on NASCAR races, you know you’ll get a good payday, because not since Jeff Gordon’s dominance has it been relatively easy to pick a winner.
Chase Elliott is the favorite on most boards entering Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, and at +1,000 most places, he’s getting 10-to-1 odds — a $100 bet will win you $1,000, while, naturally, a modest $10 wager will win you $100.
But a betting favorite at Daytona can blow your investment faster than you can say “Big trouble in Turn 3!”
If this was a road-course race, you’d be a fool to not at least post some hedge dough on Chase (while reserving some for the consistently undervalued AJ Allmendinger, of course).
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But this is superspeedway “plate” racin’, where the gulf between the Haves and Have Nots shrinks to the width of a soda cracker — on its side, by the way.
This type of racing, the drivers always tell us, is a bit of a crapshoot, so why not play along and roll the dice on some potential paydays?
Where to find them? Not at the top of the odds boards, where Chase is closely followed in the favorites category by multiple plate-race winners Ryan Blaney and Denny Hamlin, as well as current Daytona/Talladega frontrunner Bubba Wallace.
Nope, minimal research tells you there are some potential deals down south, where you’d find, for instance, Corey LaJoie at +10,000 on DraftKings as late as Thursday afternoon. Over the past 14 plate races at Daytona and Talladega since 2019, only eight current racers have a better average finish than LaJoie (15.1), who's finished ninth or better four times.
And there’s this. Beginning this year, Atlanta is now a plate-race track, taking on the big-pack personality of the two superspeedways.
LaJoie finished fifth there in the spring, and in the return visit this summer he was prepared to win on the final lap when Chase Elliott threw a major block to blunt LaJoie’s run — he staggered badly after that and finished 21st, but everyone knew he was just one block away from victory.
But also at +10,000 is Ty Dillon, who’s just as intriguing. In his past six Daytona starts, he’s had three finishes of sixth or better. He had a third-place Talladega run last fall. If that’s not worth kicking the tires, what is?
No, we won’t count Justin Haley’s 2019 rain-shortened win at Daytona as evidence of another worth-the-price pick. It had some fluke factor to it, to say the least.
But at +5,000, what we will count is his sixth-place finish at Daytona a year ago, his seventh at Atlanta this summer, and this: In his last seven Daytona/Talladega starts in the Xfinity Series, he has four wins, including that last two summertime races at Daytona.
Does that mean a lot? Not a lot, but it has to mean something, doesn’t it?
So, do your additional research, find a driver who sniffs around the top 10 a lot at plate races, and plan accordingly. You never know when that guy’s habit of hanging around the front will pay off in a big way.
Just ask last year’s Daytona 500 champion, Michael McDowell.
He’s +4,000 by the way.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Coke Zero 400 Daytona odds, picks: What underdogs might win/
