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Amazing but true fact, Kyle Larson has never won at Darlington at any level. As the Cup Series heads to Darlington South Carolina this weekend I’ve already made my first outright bet of the week. As you might guess from the first sentence, that bet was on Kyle Larson. He has three second place finishes in the Cup Series but has never won. I think that all changes on Sunday though. Before we get into why I’m betting on Larson, lets talk about Darlington some.
Darlington is a oddball track, both in its size and shape. Darlington is 1.366 miles long and is “egg shaped.” The egg shape being due to a minnow pond that Harold Brasington, the track’s builder, promised the land’s seller he would preserve. To accomodate this the track has relatively steep banking in the turns. Turns 1 and 2 are banked at 25 degrees. Turns 3 and 4 have 23 degree banking. The track also feature aggressive tire wear.
Despite its unique features, we can glean information about how drivers will perform at Darlington based on performance at other tracks. Driver performance at Homestead, another high wear intermediate length track can provide good information. Driver performance at Auto Club, which although the track does not have steep banking does feature a need for horsepower and high tire wear. With the increased tire wear at Kansas and Las Vegas the past two years we can even find some useful information from performance at those tracks.
I was shocked to see Larson open above +450 but I’m happy to take it. As I mentioned in the introduction, Larson has never won here but he is really good at Darlington. Larson has made ten starts here in the Cup Series. In those ten starts he has led 686 laps of the 3347 he has completed (20.49%).
Last year in the spring race Larson had a dominate car. He led 30 of 112 laps (26.78%) before his engine failed. In the Southern 500 he also had some sort of mechanical issue which took him several laps down. He also had pit road issues late. At Homestead he led 74.53% of the race. At Homestead he also had an astonishing 47.39% of all fastest laps. For reference, so far in 2023, the greatest percentage of fastest laps any driver has had was William Byron at Las Vegas. At Las Vegas Byron had just 24.58% of all fastest laps.
Last week at Kansas Larson had a very fast car. Even after getting turned on lap and having to work his way back through the field he had a car that could win. He was obviously leading on the final lap before his battle with Denny resulted in him getting lose. Denny then nudged him to take away the win. Larson also had a fast car a Dover before Ross Chastain turned Brennan Poole into him.
Given how good Larson is here and where I expected his odds to open at +600 is a gift that shouldn’t be passed on. I would take this down to +550. When odds opened I snagged Larson it at +650 before he was bet down to +600. I don’t expect +600 to stay around much longer so bet it now.
