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Live-action NASCAR racing is back! The sport suspended its season after its March 8 race in Phoenix, but it will resume with two events at Darlington Raceway this week. The first race runs on Sunday afternoon (FOX) and the second on Wednesday night (FS1).

If you’re looking to bet on the race this weekend, you can start by reading my NASCAR betting guide. Since NASCAR is both a game of driver skill and team equipment, your method must weigh both sides of that equation. As a result, my betting formula combines a driver’s performance at a specific track with their recent speed.

Let’s see who the math favors this weekend.

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Past Performance at Darlington

Darlington, also known as the Lady in Black, is unlike most tracks. The egg-shaped 1.366-mile course features wide turns one and two and narrow turns three and four. No other track in NASCAR is that similar to Darlington, so I’ll focus on Darlington-specific stats here. Let’s take a look at the 10 best average Cup Series finishers here.

Driver Name	Avg Finish	Races	Wins	Top 5’s	Top 10’s	Driver Rating (Last 10)
Erik Jones	4.67	3	1	2	3	110.8333
Denny Hamlin	7.79	14	2	7	11	107.78
Brad Keselowski	10.73	11	1	4	6	100.86
Kyle Busch	11.07	15	1	4	10	110.8
Martin Truex, Jr.	11.57	14	1	2	6	100.13
Jimmie Johnson	12.1	21	3	9	12	90.57
Austin Dillon	12.5	6	0	1	2	77.31667
Ryan Newman	12.57	21	0	7	13	84.52
Kevin Harvick	14.35	23	1	8	12	112.55
Chris Buescher	14.75	4	0	0	0	72.975

Erik Jones headlines the list in terms of average finishes, but it’s a much closer race when we look at driver rating. That statistic weighs finishing position, average running position, laps led, and lead-lap finishes, among other variables, and it paints a clearer picture than average finish alone.

Kevin Harvick leads the pack in driver rating, and he hasn’t finished outside the top-10 at Darlington since 2012. Erik Jones and Kyle Busch are close seconds — Kyle hasn’t finished worse than 11th since 2009, and Jones has never finished outside the top-10 here in three appearances.

Next, we’ve got Denny Hamlin. He has the second-most wins here of all active drivers, behind only the aging Jimmie Johnson. However, he is coming off a career-worst finish of 29th here last year. Hamlin has finished in the top-10 here all but three times, and if you exclude his outlier 2019, Hamlin’s driver rating would be 111.76 — a close second to Harvick.

Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex, Jr. are also worth talking about here. Brad K has the third-best average finish, and while he’s been less consistent at finishing in the top-10, he’s always put together a top-10 when starting on the front row, and that’s where he’ll start on Sunday. Meanwhile, Truex has improved considerably at Darlington since joining the Toyota camp. He has a win and two top-10s, and despite his finishes of 11th in 2018 and 15th in 2019, he could rebound this weekend.

Recent Speed

If you’re new to the sport, you need to understand that driver skill isn’t everything. You’re only as good a racer as the car you’re given, so skilled drivers in awful equipment won’t have much of a chance. Ryan Smith, formerly of the Athletic, calculated speed rankings for each driver through the first four races. I’ll include the numbers for the key drivers at Darlington, and if you want to support Smith now that he’s been laid off from the Athletic, you can check out his website (and Patreon) here.

Rank	Driver	Average Central Speed
3	Brad Keselowski	5
5	Kevin Harvick	6.33
6	Martin Truex, Jr.	7.33
8	Kyle Busch	9
14	Denny Hamlin	12.67
18	Erik Jones	15.33

After dominating the series in 2019, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Toyotas have gotten off to a slow start. Denny Hamlin may have won at Daytona, but Smith doesn’t use drafting stats in his calculations, and Fords led the way for most of the race. And that’s the case here, too, as Keselowski and Harvick both drive Fords.

That said, the Toyotas aren’t far off the pace. At Phoenix Raceway, a 1.022-mile track, Kyle Busch pulled off a third-place finish, and his Gibbs teammate Martin Truex, Jr. led 11 laps before crashing.

So while 2020 has been the Year of the Fords so far, I’m not willing to rule out the Toyota drivers, especially since Darlington requires much more driver skill than other tracks.

Betting Odds 

Let’s take a look at the betting odds for our six drivers over at DraftKings Sportsbook.

Driver	To Win	Top-5	Top-10
Kyle Busch	+500	-121	-360
Kevin Harvick	+650	-108	-295
Denny Hamlin	+650	+100	-265
Brad Keselowski	+800	+125	-225
Martin Truex, Jr.	+800	+125	-225
Erik Jones	+1600	+215	-137

Kyle Busch is the slight betting favorite over Kevin Harvick. While I’d personally put Harvick over him here, I’m not taking either of them to win outright this week.

Best Single-Driver Bets

To Win: Denny Hamlin (+650)
If I have to pick a guy to win, it’s got to be Denny Hamlin. Not only is he the least rusty of all drivers — he won twice in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series — he’s also incredibly talented at this track. That said, his speed rating does leave something to be desired. But because two of his Gibbs teammates have top-10 speed, I’m still comfortable rolling with him to win.

To Finish in the Top-5: Denny Hamlin (+100) — Isaiah’s Pick
As with the above bet, Hamlin’s success at Darlington makes him a safe play here. Hamlin has posted a top-5 finish in exactly half of his races here. That’s a 50 percent chance. His line of +100 implies a 50 percent chance of the bet cashing, too, so what you buy is what you get. This is my best bet of the weekend, as this race will be too chaotic for me to be comfortable projecting a single driver to win.

Best Prop Bets

Team of Race Winner: Joe Gibbs Racing (+150)
What if I told you that you could cover four of the six drivers we’ve discussed with one bet? That’s right, this bet covers Ky. Busch, Truex, Hamlin, and Jones. While I expect Sunday’s race to get pretty wild, I’m relatively confident that a Gibbs car will cross the line in first. A Gibbs-backed Toyota has won five of the last seven Darlington races (that’s every Darlington race with the Gen-6 car), and that includes wins from Truex, Hamlin, and Jones. This is a safe multi-unit bet that you can make even safer by…

Team of Race Winner: Joe Gibbs Racing (+150) AND To Win: Kevin Harvick (+650)
This bet covers all your bases. It would’ve cashed in six of the last seven races at Darlington (if you count Truex’s 2016 win as one for Gibbs), and it gets you exposure to five of the best drivers in the sport. If you lay a three-unit play on Gibbs and a one-unit play on Harvick, you’re sure to profit if one of the five drivers win. Working with a $1 unit, let’s break this bet down:

Side of the Bet	Units	Total Bet	Odds	Total Payout	Total Profit
Joe Gibbs (Team)	3	$3.00	+150	$7.50	$3.50 (87.5%)
Kevin Harvick (Driver)	1	$1.00	+650	$7.50	$3.50 (87.5%)

As you can see, this bet will pay out nicely should it hit — you’re essentially paying for a -115 line on five drivers. If you want to make a multi-unit play on NASCAR, this is the way to go.

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Isaiah Sirois is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Isaiah, check out his archive and follow him @is_sirois.