If I asked you to rank the current Cup drivers superspeedway abilities I imagine it would take most readers some time to get to William Byron. It shouldn’t though, Byron has been a sneaky good superspeedway driver throughout his career. In 20 career cup starts between Daytona and Talladega Byron has DNF’d 9 times, which is probably why he may not jump to the top of many folks superspeedway drivers list. Despite the DNFs he has also led 189 laps of the 3095 he has completed, good for 6.1% of all laps run. Byron won the summer Cup race at Daytona in 2020 and had a Xfinity Series win at Daytona back in 2017.
If we were to assume that his 6.1% of laps led means that he should win superspeedway races at that same rate we would get “fair odds” of +1540. So in theory +1800 which is available at a number of books would be a good bet. However, I’m targeting another market for Byron which I like even more. At Betway Byron’s top Chevy odds are +850.
By moving from betting on Byron to win outright to him to be top Chevy we eliminate over half the field. We move from 39 to just 16 drivers that he has to beat. More importantly, we eliminate the Fords, which looked very strong in the Duels and who according to Denny Hamlin may have an aerodynamic advantage. By moving to the Top Chevy market we also eliminate Hamlin himself, who is arguably the best superspeedway driver in the field.
The implied odds of +850 are just 10.53%. I estimate that Byron wins this market closer to 13% of the time which gives gives us plenty of value at +850. I’ve placed .6u on Byron to be the Top Chevy at this price.
I would bet this down to +700 (giving bets on Byron in this market value at Hard Rock +800 and Bet365 +700).