Apparently, it’s not just Shane van Gisbergen who was eager to make right-hand turns again.
The wagering public is also glad to see it. For his sake, anyway. SVG is the heavy favorite entering the weekend in Mexico City — he’s at +300, and the next favorite is Christopher Bell at +600. This will be the fourth of five straight Cup Series races on Amazon’s Prime Video.
It’s been tough for SVG in his first full-time Cup season. Just one top-10, and naturally that came at the season’s only road race so far — in early March at Austin, where he finished sixth.
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Three of the next five Cup races are on road courses, however, and van Gisbergen hopes to make the most of it. In 29 Cup starts, his five top-10s and lone win have all come on road courses, while his three Xfinity wins last year were on road layouts.
But while he’s obviously happy to be back on his favorite type of playing field, it’s not like he’s the only quality road racer out there. In fact, there’s some damn good road-racing talent quite a ways down the odds board.
Let’s visit the pylon.
NASCAR betting favorites: Chase Elliott finally back in triple digits
+300: Shane van Gisbergen
+600: Christopher Bell
+750: William Byron
+800: Tyler Reddick
+850: Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott
We don’t often lead with the dude sitting in the fifth slot of the big board, but boy oh boy, it’s about time Chase is back under +1000 entering a race weekend. In fact, he’s been living in the +1500 area recently, largely because we’re now comfortably over a calendar year since his last win. Remember when he was indisputably the best road-course racer in the Cup Series? You have to assume he’s still among the top, so maybe this is the week he regains some mojo.
Some mid-level bargains available for Mexico City race
+1200: AJ Allmendinger
+1400: Kyle Busch, Chris Buescher, Daniel Suarez
+1750: Ross Chastain
+2250: MIchael McDowell, Carson Hocevar
+3000: Ty Gibbs, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe
If Allmendinger was a little happier with his equipment, he’d be in that list of favorites above. As is, he could take a minivan to the lead pack. Gotta say, though, in this group and at that price, I really like McDowell.
Even more potential bargains, including Ryan Blaney
+4000: Austin Cindric
+5000: Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney
+10000: Bubba Wallace
+15000: Ryan Preece, Todd Gilliland
Five of Cindric’s 13 Xfinity Series wins were on road courses, but it hasn’t translated to Cup success. No crime there, I reckon. Logano and Blaney are the obvious choices to challenge from this group, though they’ve combined for one road win over the past decade.
Former NASCAR champ, two Daytona 500 winners among longshots
+20000: Brad Keselowski, Zane Smith
+25000: Riley Herbst, Josh Berry, Austin Dillon, Erik Jones, Cole Custer, Noah Gragson, Justin Haley
+50000: Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ty Dillon, John Hunter Nemechek
+100000: Katherine Legge, Cody Ware
It’s been a tough dabble in stock-car racing for Legge this year. Five starts (four in Xfinity, one in Cup) and five crashes, with varying levels of blame sent her way. But this will be her first road-course start of this part-time season, and her upbringing and nearly all of her career were spent on such things, in sports-cars and IndyCar. Last I looked, she was +2500 for a top 10. Stranger things have happened.
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR betting odds for Mexico City race: Chase Elliott lives! SVG turns right again!
Reporting by Ken Willis, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
