Not much to go on in placing Daytona 500 bet
It's an odd circumstance of NASCAR that its counterpart to the Super Bowl - the Daytona 500 - is not the last but rather the first race of the year.
It's an odd circumstance of NASCAR that its counterpart to the Super Bowl - the Daytona 500 - is not the last but rather the first race of the year.
But in addition to the vastly different timing of when the biggest NFL game and NASCAR's most popular race are held, there's another important distinction - at least from a betting perspective.
While football fans have piles of information to sift through in making an informed bet on the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, the most heavily wagered-on race of the year, is a "a crapshoot," in the words of one expert.
"The usual way to handicap a NASCAR race is to look at trends, such as a driver's performance on a particular track, and the most recent practices," said Micah Roberts, a former Las Vegas bookmaker turned handicapper. "But with the Daytona 500 set up the way it is, you could just throw a dart."
Roberts used to run the bookmaking operations for Station Casinos, a chain of local casinos in Las Vegas, and as a NASCAR enthusiast he frequently offered some of the most expansive menus of auto racing wagering propositions in the city.
More recently, he's written about the sport for vegasinsider.com, an online gambling information website, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The central issue at Daytona is that NASCAR has mandated certain engine changes - known as restrictor-plate modifications - to slow down the cars and make the race safer. With NASCAR observing the 10th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona, safety concerns remain paramount.
However, the engine changes also mean that dominating racing teams, such as Richard Childress, are essentially being backed up to the rest of the field.
"It would be as if you had an NFL team that blitzes a lot, like the Steelers, and you told them that they can't use their zone-blitz packages for the Super Bowl," Roberts said.
While the restrictor-plate changes may wind up making for a more competitive as well as a safer race, from a handicapping point of view "that makes the Daytona 500 a crapshoot or a lottery," Roberts said.
Still, the top teams will have certain advantages, and indeed, of the four NASCAR races held last year with restrictor-plate reductions, the Childress team won three of them. An important edge for a team such as Childress is that with cars made slower by the modifications, the technique of a trailing car drafting and making a slingshot move around a lead car becomes more important.
And the four drivers of the Childress team may be more likely to effectively work in tandem if the opportunity presents itself.
This week, NASCAR even mandated some design changes regarding cooling systems that will also cut down on some of that drafting technique, but it's still going to be a big part of Sunday's race.
At midweek, Vegas odds had Childress driver Kevin Harvick the favorite at 6-1. Some other big-name drivers at the top of the odds board were Kyle Busch at 8-1, Tony Stewart at 8-1, and Jimmie Johnson at 10-1. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won the pole but wrecked in practice and will have to drop to the back of the pack at the start, was listed at 12-1.
The considerable uncertainty over how Daytona will play out means that quality drivers with long odds have to be considered a value play, Roberts said.
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