NASCAR Best Bets at Darlington: Real Heroes 400
NASCAR returns to the track this week for the first of seven races in 11 days with the First Heroes 400 at Darlington Sunday afternoon. We’ve already given you a rundown on the best options when it comes to betting on NASCAR races. In addition to that, we gave you some background on the track at Darlington Raceway along with some history about it. With all that information out there, let’s take a look at the potential top options for placing some winners when the return to the asphalt hits your television set this weekend.
With no qualifying for this race, the starting lineup will be decided by owner points that will put the field in four groups. A random draw will then take place within those groups to slot teams. The top 12 teams in owner points will be in a group, as will teams 13-24 and 25-36, with the draws then putting the teams in their respective spots on the starting grid. The last four spots will be filled by open, non-chartered teams in order of owner points. In another twist, the finish of racers in Sunday’s Real Heroes 400 will help determine where a driver sits on the starting grid for Wednesday’s race. The position that a racer finishes in the field Sunday will be flipped for Wednesday’s race with the positions split from 1-20 and 21-40. That means that whoever wins Sunday’s race would be 20th in the starting grid for Wednesday, the second-place finisher would be 19th and so on. The same concept applies for racers that finish 21st through 40th in the race.
First, we’ll recap with some of the important facts about the race and the track:
First Heroes 400
Distance: 400 miles, 298 laps
Track Length: 1.366 miles egg-shaped oval
Banking: Turns 1 and 2 are 25 degrees, turns 3 and 4 are 23 degrees, front and back straightaways are 3 and 2 degrees, respectively
Top Contenders (odds according to VegasInsider.com):
- Kevin Harvick +450
- Kyle Busch +450
- Joey Logano +700
- Brad Keselowski +800
- Chase Elliott +850
- Denny Hamlin +850
- Martin Truex Jr. +950
- Erik Jones +1300
- Kurt Busch +1600
Harvick has had some quality success at this track as he has finished in the top-10 in 12 of his 23 races at the track. He won from the pole in 2014 in the last race that Darlington held in the spring and has a pair of second-place finishes plus a third-place finish on the books. Hamlin has had a lot of success at the track, winning twice, finishing in the top-five seven times and in the top-10 11 times in 14 races. Logano won two of the first four races of the season, including a triumph at Phoenix on March 8 in the most recent race before NASCAR paused its season. Jones is a bit of a long shot on the books, mainly due to a lack of a winning pedigree on the circuit.
He has only two career wins and has an average finish of 19.75 in his four races this season. However, one needs to look closer at how he has performed at Darlington in his career. In his three career races on the track, he has finished in the top 10 all three times. Last year, he started 15th in the field but ended up winning the race comfortably. In his other two starts at the track, he finished fifth after starting 10th back in 2017 and then logged an eighth-place finish after starting seventh in 2018. Jones is clearly someone that shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to this race. It’s always tough to pick a winner because a crash, a blown tire or a pit-road penalty can take you from the front of the pack to out of the hunt in a hurry but you have to ride the track record of guys, especially with Brad Keselowski warning against a sense of confidence with the circuit’s return to racing.
Top Choices: Kevin Harvick (+450), Erik Jones (+1300)
Other Top Props (odds according to PointsBet.com):
Denny Hamlin to finish in the top 10 (-250)
Kyle Busch to finish in the top 3 (+135): He’s finished seventh or better in eight of the last 10 races at Darlington. This seems like a solid way to go.
Ryan Newman to win Group F (+225): The group that Newman is in (Cole Custer, Austin Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.) is a weak one and none of the other guys are considered to be viable contenders here. This is Newman’s first race since his horrific crash at Daytona in February but he seems a safe bet here.
William Byron (-135) to finish higher than Matt Kenseth: Kenseth steps back in for Chip Ganassi Racing after Kyle Larson was dumped last month after using a racial slur. Byron was solid in the iRacing Series and that, plus Kenseth’s rustiness, gives him the edge.