Top 5 NASCAR Betting Picks for Saturday (Dover Double-Header)
The NASCAR Cup Series handled the Daytona Road Course better than everyone expected last Sunday. Despite having no past races, practice, or qualifying at the track, drivers handled the circuit well. Unlike the Xfinity Series, we didn’t have seven guys miss the first corner.
The sport now heads to Dover for a double-header. Saturday’s race gets underway at 4:00 PM EST, and you can tune in on NBC. Check back on Sunday for my picks for the second race!
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To Finish Top-5: Chase Elliott (-110)
Elliott, fresh off a win at the Daytona Road Course, will look to maintain his momentum at Dover. The 24-year-old has six top-fives in his eight career races here, and that includes a win in 2018.
Since Elliott has posted top-fives in 75 percent of his Dover races, he’s beating this line’s implied odds (52.38%) by almost 25 percent. That’s a great value. And of his two career misses at Dover, one was due to an engine failure, which was no fault of his own. He has the best average finish here of any active driver (8.63), ahead of Daniel Suarez (8.67) and Jimmie Johnson (9.92).
Elliott should compete for a strong result on Saturday. Hendrick Motorsports’ middling speed turns me off from taking him to win (+550) or to finish top-three (+150), so I’d recommend this line instead.
Top Chevrolet Car: Chase Elliott (-112)
Even if Elliott fails to post a top-five result, it’s hard to see another Chevy driver finishing higher than him. Of all full-time Chevy drivers, Elliott has the highest average driver rating (101.8), most top-fives (8), and the second-highest average finish (12.48) this season.
Kurt Busch (+850) has been Elliott’s main competition from within the Chevrolet camp, as he has a better average finish (11.39), but he has only half of Elliott’s top-fives and is yet to win a race. He competes for top-tens, not top-fives, so Elliott should have some ground on him barring an accident.
DraftKings gives Jimmie Johnson (+550) and Alex Bowman (+650) better shots to beat Elliott, but both drivers have struggled this season. Johnson used to be good at Dover, but he hasn’t posted a top-five here since 2017. And while Bowman posted a pair of top-fives here last year, he hadn’t finished better than 20th here before then. This line is a great, lower-risk alternative to taking Elliott to finish top-five.
To Finish Top-5: Martin Truex Jr. (-139)
Truex hasn’t finished worse than third since July’s Kansas race. He also hasn’t finished better than third since then, either. After failing to post a top-five finish until June, Truex now has the fifth-most of them (8).
Aside from being in excellent form, Truex is also great at Dover. He earned his first Cup Series win here in 2007 (in DEI equipment, no less), and he’s returned to Victory Lane twice since then. In his eight Dover races in a Toyota, Truex has four top-threes, six top-fives, and seven top-10s.
While his line is set accordingly, he’s beaten this line more often than his implied odds (58.17%) indicate. He’s a strong option to win (+400) or to finish top-three (+115), but I’d rather have the breathing room as a hedge against a late-race restart.
To Finish Top-10: Clint Bowyer (+130)
I’ve been riding Bowyer hard in these columns. Why? His lack of a win means that he needs to stay up front to earn points and protect his playoff spot. He only has six top-10s in 23 races, but he has 12 top-15 finishes, so he has often been close.
Bowyer has posted solid finishes at Dover throughout his career. He has the ninth-best average finish among active drivers (13.07), and he has 16 top-10 finishes in 28 races. With top-10s in 57 percent of his races here, he’s beating his implied odds (43.48%) by 13.5 points. Since he joined Stewart-Haas Racing in 2017, Bowyer has four top-10s in six races at Dover, and his only misses were due to crashes.
I don’t expect Bowyer to compete for the win (+4000) or a top-five (+500). That said, he should run between seventh and twelfth for most of this race, and you’re just betting on him to keep his car clean and finish toward the higher end of that range. And with his line in the plus money, he’s a high-value option in this spot.
H2H: Clint Bowyer (-106) vs. William Byron
And if Bowyer can’t bring it home in the top-10, I expect him to finish ahead of Elliott’s teammate, William Byron. While Byron is also racing for points, his team has less of a gap on the cut line, and they’ve been more aggressively pursuing stage points. Although stage points can be helpful in the playoff race, pushing for them can hurt your eventual finishing position.
Byron doesn’t have the best track record at Dover. In four career starts, he has just one top-10 finish. Bowyer is also 2-2 against Byron in those races.
Both of these drivers have the same odds to win (+4000), post a top-five (+500), and finish top-10 (+130). As a result, I’m not sure why Byron (-124) is so strongly favored on this line. Bowyer was even in the plus money up until this morning, so punch him in here while you still can.
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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.