NASCAR Daytona 500 Odds, Expert Picks & Predictions For Great American Race

The 2024 NASCAR season begins Sunday with the Daytona 500, the most important and sometimes most unpredictable race of the year. Just ask Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the +3500-to-win driver who claimed last year’s Super Bowl of stock car racing, a triumph akin to the Jacksonville Jaguars crashing the NFL playoffs and making off with the Lombardi Trophy.

In the Daytona 500, though, such things are a matter of course. Stenhouse was actually the third consecutive long-odds winner of NASCAR’s biggest race, following +3000 Austin Cindric in 2022 and +10000 Michael McDowell in 2021. Add in +5000 winner Austin Dillon in 2018, and longshots have claimed the Daytona 500 in three of the past five seasons, making this one of the more tumultuous stretches in the history of an event that was first contested in 1959.

Could that continue in 2024? Absolutely, given the unique aerodynamic properties which produce so many unlikely outcomes at Daytona International Speedway. There are some elite-level drivers who are fantastic at Daytona—like three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, one of the odds favorites again this year. But the pileup known as the Big One lurks around every corner, cars get shuffled in and out of traffic almost at random, and the Daytona remains a race almost anyone in the field can win.

NASCAR Daytona 500 Odds

Odds via DraftKings and current as of publication.

NASCAR Daytona 500 Betting Tips

Driver’s skill is minimized: There’s a reason most NASCAR races are won by championship-level drivers—they have the best teams, they have the most funding, and they have superior skill behind the wheel. A lot of that goes out the window in the Daytona 500, where everything is dictated by the whims of the aerodynamic draft powering cars around the 2.5-mile track. Without a strong draft behind them, drivers are extremely limited in their ability to change lanes, pass, or make a move for the lead.

That fact mitigates the driver skill we see on display most other weeks on the NASCAR circuit. Some past champions like Kyle Larson (career average finish 22.6) and Martin Truex Jr. (21.4) historically struggle at Daytona. William Byron, a 2024 title contender, has never finished better than 21st in the Daytona 500. Five-time race winner Tyler Reddick has never finished better than 27th, and has crashed out of four of his five career Daytona 500 starts. You get the picture. There are no guarantees at Daytona, no matter how good the driver is anywhere else.

Some guys have a knack for the place: All that said, there are some drivers who just have a feel for how to work the draft at Daytona and get where they need to go. No question, Hamlin is one— he finished third, first, first and fifth in four straight Daytona 500s from 2018 through 2021, a ludicrous degree of consistency on such an unpredictable track. Bubba Wallace, who drives for a team co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan, has the best average finish of any active driver at Daytona—12.9, which includes a pair of runner-up finishes in the Daytona 500.

Dillon, the 2018 winner, also owns a third-place finish in the 500, as well as a victory in Daytona’s 400-mile summertime event. Joey Logano, winner of the Daytona 500 in 2015, finished second and fifth in the two annual races at Daytona last season. McDowell’s 2021 victory may have been a shocker, but it’s also one of eight career top-10s he has on the Daytona track. The stats bear out who’s historically fared well at Daytona and who hasn’t—it’s just a matter of identifying them.

It’s how you finish—not where you start: The Daytona 500 qualifying procedure is unique, with single-car runs Wednesday night determining the top two spots, and the twin 150-mile qualifying races on Thursday filling in the rest. The two guys who lock down the front row are celebrated like champions, with the pole winner even receiving a trophy. Watch all this with the knowledge that no driver has won the Daytona 500 from the front row since 2000.

That was Dale Jarrett, back in an era when cars that got out front at Daytona tended to stay there. Things have changed back then, with the cars becoming much more sensitive to the air in the draft. Over the past five years, just one front-row starter has even finished in the top-five in the Daytona 500, Alex Bowman last season. Stenhouse won last year from 31st place. Cars will shuffle around so much in the draft, where they start hardly matters anymore

NASCAR Cook Out 400 Best Bets

Chris Buescher to Win (+1100)

Buescher hits the sweet spot at Daytona—he’s good enough to contend for race wins just about anywhere but is particularly strong on the high banks of the 2.5-mile track. Buescher finished fourth in last year’s 500, followed that with a victory in the Daytona summer event, and has also been third and fifth in the Great American Race. It helps that he has a teammate in Brad Keselowski who’s also a Daytona whiz himself.

Bubba Wallace Top 3 (+650)

Wallace has been knocking on the door at Daytona for years, finishing second in 2018 and then replicating that feat in 2022. He was caught up in a crash in overtime of last year’s 500, so we never got the chance to see what a car that led five laps late in the race was capable of at the checkered flag. But if Wallace can keep it clean on Sunday, his history at Daytona suggests he’ll be in the mix at the end.

Austin Dillon Top 5 (+375)

IExcellent value on a driver who owns four top-10 finishes at Daytona since his breakthrough victory in the 500 in 2018. Dillon also finished third in the Daytona 500 in 2021, he won the track’s summer race in 2022, and his average finish of 16.1 on the track ranks fourth-best among active fill-time drivers. Dillon has run 45% of his career Daytona 500 laps in the top 15, according to NASCAR statistics, evidence that he’s not afraid to get his car up front and keep it there.

NASCAR Daytona 500 Time, Date and TV

When: Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET

Where: Daytona International Raceway

TV: FOX

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