NASCAR YellaWood 500 Predictions, Picks, Odds & Talladega Longshots to Bet

• YellaWood 500 chaos: Blaney and Logano need wins, but Talladega’s wild draft makes every prediction a gamble.
• Longshot opportunities: Chastain and Larson offer value at prices the books are overlooking.
• Our predictions: Skip the chalk and check out who could steal a victory at the superspeedway.

The YellaWood 500 brings the Round of 8 to Talladega’s high banks, where playoff predictions collide with superspeedway chaos and every lap is a roll of the dice.

Michael McDowell grabbed the pole for Sunday’s race. He’ll be joined on the front row by Chase Briscoe, who continues to put in masterful Saturday performances while searching for his third win of the year and a trip to the Championship finale in Phoenix.

Co-favorites Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano are lurking in the middle of the pack — Blaney rolls off eighth while Logano starts 16th — and you can safely assume neither of them will stay there for long…that’s just how Talladega works.

The Round of 8 is headed down to DEGA. #NASCARPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/AQZdP29vcT

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 15, 2025

NASCAR YellaWood 500 Odds

*Odds available on BetRivers Sportsbook as of 11:02pm on October 18th, 2025.

Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney are the co-race favorites at +900, which translates to roughly an 11% chance to win. Translation: the books think they’re solid bets… but Talladega laughs in the face of “solid.”

We’re keeping an eye elsewhere — value and mayhem are the name of the game on Sunday.

Yellawood 500 Predictions

Talladega Superspeedway spans 2.66 miles with 33 degrees of banking in the corners, making it the biggest and baddest oval on the schedule. Pack racing will be the flavor of the day, with “The Big One” looming around every turn, waiting to ruin someone’s playoff hopes and half of the DFS lineups in America.

Successfully handicapping a superspeedway race is about as impossible as folding a fitted sheet in the dark, but we’ve got the guile and forethought to get you to the pay window anyway.

Talladega races a lot like Daytona and the recently renovated Atlanta — just with a bit more elbow room. The surface is much wider, which means you’ll see plenty of three- and four-wide racing… and plenty of poorly timed commercial breaks to cut away from it.

When we dig into the numbers, our focus shifts. Fast laps and pit crew efficiency aren’t the story here. Instead, we’re leaning on average running position, laps led, and DNF rate across these drafting tracks. Let’s sort through the noise and find some winners.

Yellawood 500 Longshots to Bet

Denny Hamlin punched his Championship 4 ticket last weekend with a win in Las Vegas, leaving the rest of the field scrambling for points and prayer candles. Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, and Chase Briscoe currently round out the top four, while William Byron (-15) and Chase Elliott (-23) need a little Talladega magic to stay alive.

All eyes will be on race favorites Ryan Blaney (-24) and Joey Logano (-31) to grab a win and lock themselves in automatically. You know it. I know it. The books know it. So… let’s look somewhere else.

Outright Winner: Kyle Larson (+1800)

The sportsbooks are snoozing and counting sheep on poor Kyle Larson. He’s not the first name you circle for a superspeedway race — probably not even second… or seventh. And that’s exactly why this play feels so sneaky.

Larson rolls off 19th on Sunday, with only Chase Elliott starting deeper among the remaining playoff drivers. But don’t mistake that for a disadvantage — he’s been steadily improving in this discipline all season. Larson’s got three stage wins on superspeedways in 2025 and has scored the most total points (177) across them. That’s not a fluke; that’s a trend.

He finished third at Atlanta earlier this year, second here in the spring, and sixth at Daytona a few weeks ago. Add in the fact that he’s one of the best in the series at getting on and off pit road cleanly — something that can flip a superspeedway race in your favor — and suddenly +1800 looks like a number that sportsbooks might want back.

Outright Winner: Ross Chastain (+2800)

Would you like to add a little more pain to your Sunday?

You definitely would.

Let’s do it.

Enter Ross Chastain. Normally, by this point in the season, the playoff guys get a ton of rope — everyone steps aside to let them sort out who’s who. Chastain doesn’t give a single hoot about that. This is the same guy who aero-blocked Ryan Blaney for an hour to snag a Phoenix win during the Championship race…while he wasn’t even in the playoffs. Huge stones. Or watermelons. You decide.

He won at Talladega in 2022 at a similar number (+3300), and yes, we were there to cash that ticket. Chastain is electric, aggressive, and probably underrated at these odds. If nothing else, the ride to the finish line, or first accident, will be worth the price of admission.

We’ll be playing both Chastain and Larson for top-10 finishes at the prices above. That way, if we come close but don’t quite hit the outright, we’re still cashing some dolla dolla bills, y’all.