After two drafting tracks and a road course, the traditional oval portion of the NASCAR Cup Series season kicks off Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. Phoenix is a mile long “flat” oval with a “dogleg” on the frontstretch with 9 degrees of banking. Turns 1 and 2 are banked at 9 degrees. Turns 3 and 4 are banked at 11 degrees. The backstretch is banked at 3 degrees.
NASCAR comes to Phoenix twice a year with the second stop being the Championship Race. This weekend NASCAR and Goodyear will be bringing two tires to the track, effectively running a live tire test for the Championship Race. If the option tire, which was also used last year at Richmond and Martinsville, performs well, NASCAR will use it exclusively for the Championship Race. This wrinkle in the tire being used adds a bit of uncertainty to a normally very predictable track. As a result live betting may present great opportunities this weekend. That said, I’m still seeing value on the board right now that I want to lock in.
Bubba Wallace has not had great runs in the spring races at Phoenix the past two years. He finished 14th in 2023 and 16th in 2024. That said, in the fall races he finished 10th in 2023 and seventh last year. He also finished fourth at Richmond last summer (where the option tire was used in a points race for the first time).
Bubba has consistently been running in the Top 10 at short flat tracks. In 2024 he ran 46.03% of his laps at the short flat tracks of Phoenix, Richmond, Iowa, and New Hampshire inside the Top 10. Although its a very different track, he even managed to finish fifth at the Clash last month after starting 14th. So all things considered, I’m willing to look at his poor spring performances as outliers, rather than as red flags.
At Win The Race our Pre-Practice and Qualifying scores have Bubba Wallace ranked 11th. The Win The Race SIM FMV, which runs 20,000 simulations of the race, calculates that Bubba will finish inside the Top 10 40.79% of the time. That 40.79% translates to fair odds of +145. However, Bet365 and Hard Rock have Bubba’s Top 10 odds at +250, which is just 28.57% implied odds. This gives us a ton of cushion to be overly optimistic about Bubba’s Top 10 odds and still show value on this bet.
I’ve put a full unit on Bubba to finish Top 10 at +250 and would bet this with confidence down to +200.
