Homestead NASCAR Championship Predictions, Best Bets & Cup Series Odds (Nov. 8)
By Phil Bobbitt in Racing
Published:
- One Homestead underdog starts three spots ahead of his opponent. Both models say he’ll still be ahead at the checkered flag.
- One of our picks has beaten his opponent in six of eight races on 1.5-mile ovals this season. His opponent won their two most recent meetings. We’re betting the longer trend at Homestead.
- See our Homestead NASCAR predictions, best bets and Cup Series odds before Sunday’s 3 p.m. ET race on NBC.
SpeedwayBrandi wanted to put on Hamilton last night. After 24 straight days of election work, I was looking forward to a night off. Then I watched a musical about a guy who couldn’t stop writing and started doing the math on how much I’d written this year.
Alexander Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist essays in support of ratifying the Constitution. I write about five NASCAR gambling columns a week during the season, which gets me close to 200 this year.
Granted, he was defending a system of government. I spent a decent chunk of the year defending guys who qualify 34th…and I have defended Kyle Larson with a level of conviction that probably deserved its own footnotes.
Hamilton also had the benefit of writing under a pen name. Every time I tell you a guy starting deep in the field is better than he looks, they put my picture next to it.
I realize the overlap between Broadway fans and people shopping head-to-heads at Homestead may be me and whoever’s still reading this sentence. It’s the last Cup column of the year. We’re doing it anyway.
I opened the spreadsheet and found a matchup I liked. Was I “Satisfied” with one? Of course not. Steve’s model and mine landed on the same side of two matchups, and the first one gives us plus money.
Homestead NASCAR Championship Predictions & Best Bets
- Pick: Alex Bowman over Corey Heim (+103, BetRivers)
Steve projects Bowman to finish 9.18 and Heim 11.71. My model sees both drivers finishing farther back, at 16.52 and 18.81, respectively. We’re picturing two different afternoons for Bowman, but in both versions he’s more than two spots ahead of Heim. That’s the part we get paid on.
Bowman had a slight edge in practice, ranking 11th in our SpeedwaySteve2 metric to Heim’s 13th. He also starts 13th, three spots ahead of Heim. Those are small advantages on their own, but they line up with what both models are telling us, and we’re getting plus money.
My model gives Bowman a 54.57% chance to win the matchup. At +103, we need 49.26% to break even. If Steve’s right, we might get to watch Bowman run in the top 10. If I’m right, we might spend the final stage refreshing live timing to see who’s running 16th. Both pay the same, although I know which one our readers would rather sit through.
- Pick: Ty Gibbs over Joey Logano (-121, BetRivers)
Gibbs starts 20th, one spot behind Logano, after ranking fourth in our SpeedwaySteve2 practice metric to Logano’s 10th. The stronger case for Gibbs is what we’ve seen on the 1.5-mile ovals this season.
In eight races at Las Vegas, Kansas, Texas, Charlotte and Chicagoland, Logano averaged a 17.6 finish and led four laps total. Gibbs finished ahead of him six times. Logano took the two most recent meetings in that group, at Las Vegas and Charlotte, so there’s a reason this one is priced close. But even when Logano started on the pole at the second Kansas race, Gibbs beat him by three spots.
Gibbs has also shown he can come through traffic at Darlington, one of the tracks we use to prepare for Homestead. He started 28th in both races there this season and finished sixth and second. We’re asking considerably less of him here. He can spend the whole afternoon outside the top 10 and win the matchup.
Steve projects Gibbs at 9.93 and Logano at 13.72. My model has Gibbs at 12.17 and Logano at 14.39. My fair price is about -119, so -121 asks us to pay a little extra. I’ll lay it given the wider gap in Steve’s projection and the fact that Gibbs has beaten Logano in six of eight races on 1.5-mile ovals this season.
NASCAR Cup Series Race Winner Odds at Homestead
Market percentages as of early Sunday, Nov. 8.
These odds are for winning Sunday’s race, not the season championship. Neither of our bets needs a race winner. For head-to-heads, shop for the best online sportsbook price on the matchup.
Want to see exactly what we’re betting? Our NASCAR, Formula 1 and IndyCar plays sync throughout race weekends, including anything we add before the green flag. Follow SpeedwaySteve2 on JuiceReel for the complete card.
After Alexander dies, Eliza spends another 50 years telling his story and making one of her own. I’ve got about three months. I’m going to clean up the spreadsheet, send out my invoices and spend enough time with my kids that they stop asking their mother who’s in the kitchen.
Thanks for reading all season and enjoy football. We’ll see you at Daytona in February, when I’ll be back on deadline and Kyle Larson will once again have legal representation.
Phil Bobbitt is a motorsports betting analyst and recurring guest on CBS Sports HQ, The Early Edge, and VSiN’s A Numbers Game. He and his pal Steve developed a racing algorithm that’s profited over 260 units and $1 million in DFS winnings since 2020.
