The Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway is this weekend and sportsbooks have firmly planted Kyle Larson as the favorite to win. And can you blame them? Larson is coming off of another absolutely dominating effort at Kansas a week ago, and back when he was with Chip Ganassi Racing, he put up insanely good numbers here at Darlington with an average finish of 6.7. He also has 500 career laps led here at “The Lady in Black,” which is more than Martin Truex, Jr., Brad Keselowski, and Kurt Busch, just to name a few. Oh, and Larson has done that in under half of the career starts as those other guys.
So should you bet Larson to win this week? Personally, I’m not a fan of the 4/1 odds, but I’d consider it at 5/1 or longer.
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Top Bets for Darlington
***I’m not really loving the betting options this weekend at Darlington, so I only have a couple of bets put in as of Thursday afternoon. I’ll add any more that I may take as the weekend progresses, but as of now, this is it.***
2.5u on Christopher Bell (+100) over Ryan Blaney – This one is giving me flashbacks to the Richmond race, when I ended up putting one of the biggest bets of my life on Christopher Bell on this same matchup. Just like at Richmond, Ryan Blaney has never shown much promise here at Darlington. I can’t really explain, but until he does, I’ll take CBell in a matchup like this every time. Blaney has never finished better than 13th at Darlington in eight Cup Series starts and has just one race here with a driver rating over 76.9. Christopher Bell struggled a bit here last season, but he was a rookie, and he did end up 11th in the second race. Also, he’s now in the #20 Toyota, which Erik Jones used to finished 8th or better in every single Darlington race he ran while in it. Bell has also been impressive in the other 750 hp races this season, winning at the Daytona Road Course as well as finishing 9th at Phoenix, 7th at Martinsville, and 4th at Richmond.
0.5u on William Byron Top 5 Finish (+210) – I want to see William Byron win this race. He announced this week that his mother has a brain tumor, and with this race being on Mother’s Day, it would be awesome to see him win for her. It’d be a great story and would also firmly put Byron into the “possible Championship contenders” category, has it would give him two wins on the year and ten top 10 finishes through the first 12 races. This #24 team is putting up great results and probably not getting the recognition they deserve. But anyway, Byron won at Homestead this year, and they ran the same tire combination that Goodyear is bringing to Darlington, and last year at Darlington, he finished 5th in the third race and was up near the leaders in the first race before hitting the wall. I definitely think Byron will contend this weekend, and I love the value of +210 for a top 5 finish. So why am I only putting half a unit on it? Well… he’s been hit with the #JordanJinx this weekend:
