NASCAR: Daytona 500 Betting Preview

It is the first race of the season, and it is the biggest race of the season. It is the Daytona 500, aka the Great American Race, and it is this Sunday, signaling the beginning of another season of Cup Series racing.

Qualifying for the race is Wednesday night, and the green flag drops at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday at Daytona International Speedway.

Daytona 500 Winner Odds

Kyle Larson (+1000)

Denny Hamlin (+1100)

Kyle Busch (+1100)

Ryan Blaney (+1200)

Joey Logano (+1200)

Chase Elliott (+1200)

Brad Keselowski (+1400)

Todd Gilliland (+1600)

Ryan Preece (+2000)

William Byron (+2000)

From a betting perspective, this is the hardest race of the season. We don’t know how teams are running, which cars are in the best conditions, and which teams are working best together. It’s a blank slate and anything can happen. We’ve had +10000 winners like Michael McDowell, and we had last year’s winner William Byron cross the finish line at +2000.

As Byron goes for his second straight Daytona 500, he is once again +2000. Maybe that’s a good luck sign for him.

Kyle Larson has never won this race, but he heads into the weekend as the slight favorite. He is also the cofavorite to win the Cup Series Championship in 2025, paying +550. Christopher Bell is also paying +550 to win the championship. However, he is down at +2200 to win this weekend at Daytona.

Denny Hamlin has won the Daytona 500 three times, including back-to-back victories in 2019 and 2020. He has struggled since that win in 2020, finishing fifth, 37th, 17th, and 19th. Last year, he won three times during the season.

Kyle Busch has never won this race, but he did finish sixth in 2022, second in 2019, and third back in 2016. Last year, he failed to take home any checkered flags or make the playoffs.

Joey Logano was the Cup Series champion in 2024, rebounding from a 32nd-place finish at Daytona to wins in Nashville and Atlanta, and the eventual win in the finals in Phoenix. Logano has won the Cup Series twice in three years (three times overall), and his best finish at Daytona was in 2023, when he was the runner-up. In six starts at the Daytona 500, Logano has only finished the race four times.

Daytona 500 Value Bets

As already mentioned above, you can get +2000 on Byron to repeat, and you can get +2500 on former winner Austin Cindric. The winner in 2022, he also had a third-place finish on this same track at the Coke Zero Sugar 400 later in the season.

Alex Bowman is also paying +2500, which is excellent value for someone who always does well at Daytona. He was the runner-up last year at the 500, in 2023 he finished fifth, and he has four other top 10 finishes on this track. 

Martin Truex Jr. retired from full-time racing at the end of the 2024 season. ut the 2017 Cup Series champion is going to give Daytona at least one more try. He was the runner-up in 2016, missing out on the win by 0.010 seconds. He has 34 career wins, but none in the biggest race on the circuit.

He is +5000 and racing with Tricon Garage, and he will race in the Daytona Duels on Thursday, February 13, in the hopes of qualifying for Sunday.