With practice and qualifying out of the way for Sunday's Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (LVMS), it's time to re-evaluate the board now that we have weekend data to analyze.
One driver in particular stood out to me compared to their betting odds after an up and down practice session that saw him end up in the wall after some eye popping practice times.
Let's dive in.
NASCAR Pennzoil 400 Best Bet
The first of the two practice groups experienced a bit of an interruption as Team Penske's Ryan Blaney smacked the wall after completing 18 practice laps.
As a result, Blaney was unable to make a qualifying lap and will start the race dead last, in 36th place. The team elected to repair the car after the wreck, so he'll still be in the same vehicle that posted some blistering lap times in practice.
The No. 12 car started off a bit slow, turning laps that ranked in the 50th to 70th percentile in speed compared to the fastest car on each lap. However, by lap 10, his car really came to life. From that point forward, Blaney was the fastest car in his practice group on eight of the next nine laps. And even when factoring in the second practice group—which can be a bit tricky due to different track conditions—he was the fastest car on each driver's 10th through 18th lap on all but two occasions.
On those other two laps, he still ranked as the second- or third-fastest car. Looking at those nine laps as a whole, Blaney posted a FLAGS rating of 99.3%. To put that into perspective, William Byron led all cars in FLAGS for the entire practice session at 89.2%, a full 10 percentage points lower on a 0-100 scale.
For further context, during those nine laps, Blaney was nearly two-tenths of a second per lap faster than the next fastest drivers, William Byron (from Group 2) and Carson Hocevar (from Blaney’s Group 1), who each averaged a 29.89-second lap over that stretch. That means over the course of nine laps, Blaney would have built a 1.7-second lead over both drivers.
As of midday Sunday (Eastern Time), DraftKings is offering Blaney at 14-1 odds to win. My model sets his fair value at +1225, so DraftKings is one of—if not the only—places where I'm seeing value in betting on Blaney.
My Pick: Ryan Blaney to win (+1400 at DraftKings) | Bet to: +1300
