The car is all new, the racing is actually interesting, and attrition is way higher than anyone even predicted in the Cup Series.
All in all, three fun weeks of NASCAR, and three winning weeks in our racing cards now booked. Up 8 Units for the young season, the bulk of that from the Cup Series.
If subscribers followed the full card in Cup, they went 8-0 on matchups bets, got the winner (Bowman, in a stack of bets to Win, Top 5 and Top 10), bought a little too much Larson to win, and paid a half unit of insurance on Toyota......who looked competent again.
Phoenix is next week, which has big time similarities to California (which we've seen) and Darlington. Cup and Xfinity are working, Trucks have the week off.
Cup feels a lot like late summer last year when Ford couldn't win anywhere. Their best car (Blaney) got wrecked out, and no one but Logano ventured very far into the Top 10 for very long on Sunday.
Hamlin killed his own car, Kyle Busch started last and came all the way to front, almost won, and Truex was Top 10 all day for Toyota. Their teammate Christopher Bell won the pole and led early.
Toyota is going to be consistently present.
Broaden your Chevy betting choices beyond just the Hendrick cars. Reddick got back to the Top 10 after starting in rear and being not that fast all day. Ross Chastain led some laps and looked like the guy we believed on the cusp of winning last summer.
And, Erik Jones, who's been terrible at Vegas his whole career, looked great until being wrecked late. Phoenix can be one of his best spots because it's so analog to Darlington. We might get lucky and see him mispriced to open.
There was a ton of value on in-play this week. Eventual winner Bowman had spent dozens of laps in the Top 5 before the books took him much below his opening price of +1600-2000. You could also have bought Kyle Busch and Chastain when those two were in the Top 4 fairly late in the race at +2800. Seriously. Lot of value was out there.
In Xfinity and Trucks, we had some bad draws on our matchups, and I failed to diversify our bonds.
Was right to go very short Ryan Truex in Xfinity, but missed the bus on Cassill and Gibbs. Austin Hill ran well, but got rewarded with a wreck. Will be underpriced next week. He's much better than teammate Sheldon Creed so far.
In Trucks, similar bad result on matchups. Short DiBenedetto still feels right going forward, even with him finishing 6th. Will be long Zane Smith until given a big reason not to do it. Two of our matchups got broken by a wreck of Toyota teammates Ty Majeski and last year's series champ Ben Rhodes with each other.
I personally played a couple Ryan Preece matchups online right up against post time that weren't yet available when we sent the card at 3 AM Friday, because I was on a different book traveling out-of-state. He won both. My fault for not adding them late.
Preece's half-dozen Truck starts this year should be Top 5 and matchups gold.
Was our first real give back on a Trucks week since last summer.
We will see early Phoenix Cup lines on Monday, but will avoid unless we see just tremendous bargains. Openers at DK, BetRivers and Barstool are rarely a value for the consumer. Patience.
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