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Value bets to make for the Shiners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway

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Greg Matherne

Garage Guys NASCAR Titan Greg Matherne has been making "Vegas hate him" since 2021 with data driven betting analysis. 2023 Cup Season (Through Gateway): +40.54, 2022 Full Season: +119.6 units.
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In practice for today’s Shiners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway Toyota was the class of the field. Christopher Bell in particular was dominate, posting an average 25-lap time that was more than a tenth of a second faster than any other car. Toyota followed up a dominant practice with Denny Hamlin winning the pole. Three other Toyota drivers, Ty Gibbs, Erik Jones, and Tyler Reddick also qualified in the Top 10.

Unfortunately this means that the value that we saw on Toyota earlier this week is gone. That includes my midweek favorite bet of Denny Hamlin over Kyle Larson having moved from +115 to -150! Thats said, there is still value on the board, so let’s dig in.

Top Ford: Brad Keselwoski +800 (Caesars) and Chris Buescher +900 (Bet365)

Joey Logano was far and away the best Ford in practice. His Penske teammate Ryan Blaney was also strong, but the pricing of the Top Ford market has overreacted to their performance. The RFK Fords also had a pretty good practice session.

If we look at fall off between 5- and 15-lap averages, the RFK Fords were right in line with the Penske cars. The Penske cars were still faster than RFK, but RFK was closing the gap. This indicates that on long runs the RFK cars may be able to close the gap and catch the Penske drivers.

Last fall at Phoenix the RFK drivers were also very strong. Buescher finished fifth and legitimately led 18 laps. After starting in the back Keselowski fought his way to the Top 10 and was in line to finish there before the last caution shuffled him back.

The Sim Center at Win The Race shows value on both of these bets. The Sim Center has fair market value on Buescher at +576 and Keselowski at +632. To keep our edge and to account for the error bars that are inherent in simulations I don’t recommend betting these all the way down to the fair market values of the Sim Center. That said, I am comfortable betting both down to +700.

I have half a unit on both drivers to finish as Top Ford.

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