With six straight wins and seven in eight races from mid-May to early July, Hendrick Motorsports, led by Kyle Larson, appeared to have put some distance between itself and the rest of the Cup Series field. Larson climbed to the top of the championship oddsboards after three straight victories, following in the footsteps of Hendrick.
However, while Larson and teammate Chase Elliott have the two shortest odds to win the 2021 Cup title at many sportsbooks, including NASCAR partners Barstool Sportsbook and WynnBET, the NASCAR Playoffs favor Joe Gibbs Racing, making futures value on drivers from that garage more appealing.
According to data gathered by Jim Sannes, a DFS and betting analyst with numberFire, Denny Hamlin has the best average running position among the seven playoff tracks that have previously held a Cup Series race this season, with 6.3, followed by Martin Truex Jr. with 6.7. Elliott and Larson are far behind in this statistic, with 11.4 and 13.3 points, respectively.
Backing out Talladega, where quantitative analysts don’t place such a high value on running position, Hamlin (4.0) and Truex (5.2) are still first and second in average running position, respectively, with Larson (8.8) and Elliott (10.3) trailing the Gibbs teammates.
“It’s clear JGR is putting a heavy emphasis on playoff-specific tracks,” Sannes said in a direct message with NASCAR.com.
Shopping around the betting marketplace, one can find Hamlin offered at enticing 9/1 odds on FanDuel Sportsbook’s futures board, and Truex available at a fat 10/1.
Sannes likes Truex at that price. “I’m pretty into that, given how well he has run at short, flat tracks with playoff representation,” Sannes said.
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Truex has won all three of his races this season on playoff tracks: Darlington, Martinsville, and Phoenix, which will host the NASCAR Cup Series Championship. He also had a fifth-place finish at Richmond, two sixth-place finishes at Las Vegas and Kansas, and a 31st-place finish at Talladega.
While Sannes’ prediction of a 6.6 percent chance for Truex to win the championship race in Phoenix does not imply value at 10/1 odds, the fact that a driver does not have to win that race to win the championship muddles the picture.
“The data is underselling him,” Sannes continued, “and gaining more races at Richmond and Martinsville before then would likely make the sims view him much more favorably (at Phoenix).”
Why choose the No. 19 over the No. 11 given Hamlin’s aforementioned running position stats and his lead in the standings?
‘The reason I’d bet Truex instead of going Hamlin is playoff points,” Sannes said. ‘He’s got 19 thus far (Hamlin has 5 in the bank off of stage wins), and there are still two road courses left in the regular season for him to potentially beef that up. It’s just hard to deny his combo of performance on playoff tracks and playoff points already in the bank.”
