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It’s December. The 2025 Daytona 500 is over two months away. But it’s never too early for NASCAR. Caesars Sportsbook apparently agrees. They already have a robust offering of markets available and I’m seeing value.
If you are unfamiliar with NASCAR, its biggest event of the year, the Daytona 500, comes at the start of the season. On February 16th 40 cars will embark on a 500 miles trek at Daytona International Speedway, the World Center of Racing. Historically, 40% of the cars won’t make it to the end due to wrecks. For the driver who survives and wins the race, his name will be etched into history. He will also punch his ticket to the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs. With the prestige of a win and the ability to quickly secure a playoff berth, drivers are extremely aggressive and chaos can reign.
Daytona is a 2.5-mile tri-oval. The steep 31-degree banking in the turns, pushes drivers and machines to their limits. The track’s long straightaways and high banking encourage pack racing. Drivers position their cars just inches behind or beside others to “ride the draft.” The lead car breaks the air resistance, creating a pocket of lower pressure behind it. This allows trailing cars to conserve fuel and gain speed by being pulled along in the slipstream. In turn, the trailing cars reduce drag on the lead car, enabling faster speeds for both. However, given the tight formations, if one driver makes a mistake and wrecks, they will often take out multiple cars behind them as they spin through the field.
The track that is most similar to Daytona is Talladega Superspeedway. Talladega is a touch longer than Daytona, with one circuit being 2.66 miles. Talladega’s banking is similar to Daytona, with the turns being banked at 33 degrees. The biggest difference between the tracks is their width. Talladega is wider than Daytona, allowing teams to go three-wide with less risk.
The chaos of drafting tracks is a great equalizer. The “Big One” can take out drivers who are far away from the start of the incident in an instant. This means that when drivers in are in similar equipment, the potential outcome of head to head matchup tends to trend towards a coin flip. In group bets the results tend towards equal probability for all drivers in the group. So I was shocked to see Alex Bowman priced at +450 to win a four man group with his Hendrick Motorsport Teammates.
Since 2022, when then Gen 7 car made its debut, there have been 12 races at Daytona and Talladega. Alex Bowman missed one of these races with an injury. In the other 11 races he has beaten his Hendrick Teammates four times (36% of races). William Byron has made all 12 starts and has won this group in four races (33.3%). Chase Elliott has also made all 12 starts and has won 3 times (25%). Kyle Larson, while he has improved dramatically at this track type in recent races, has historically been a below average drafter, has a single win.
In addition to the four times he has won this group, Bowman finished second overall last year’s Daytona 500, just milliseconds behind William Byron. Given this consistent performance, Bowman’s odds of +450, which carry an implied probability of him winning the group just 18.18% of the time simply don’t make sense to me. If there is a knock on Bowman, it would be his weighted average running. In his 11 races Bowman has an average running position of 17.75. Chase Elliot leads the HMS stable with a weighted average running position of 13.19, just ahead of Kyle Larson at 13.32, and William Byron at 14.06.
Bowman does however have the best average finishing position of the HMS drivers at 12.73. This is because he has done a better job at surviving. Despite having started one race less than his teammates, he has still completed more laps than both William Byron and Chase Elliott. Of the HMS driver only Kyle Larson has completed more laps than Bowman on drafting tracks. Even then, Larson has only completed 28 more laps than Bowman.
All things considered, I think the four HMS drivers should have more or less equal odds to win this group. A 25% probability to win the group translates to odds of +300. So his odds of +400, which imply he would win this group just 20% of the time give us value. I would bet this with confidence down to +350.
