Let’s see what’s coming next in the World of Motorsports Bets: NASCAR and Formula 1. Going into the Japanese Grand Prix, the Red Bull team has made a change, demoting Liam Lawson and bringing up Yuki Tsunoda, who will join defending F1 champion Max Verstappen on the senior team on the Suzuka Circuit.
Tsunoda is just over four seasons into his career as an F1 driver, and after Lawson took two disappointing results, the team showed little patience.
In the Japanese capital, over 5,000 fans turned out to cheer on this rising Japanese driver about to make his debut in his home country.
Driving the RB 7 challenger, which Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel used to win world titles in 2011, he showed massive speed on the straights, was aggressive in the hairpin turns and then hit the gas on the exits, building excitement in the crowd.
Could he get a race win in his debut? That’s just one question we’ll try to answer in this week’s motor racing sports betting preview.
Motorsports Bets: Auto Racing Events and Top Picks for the Week – What events are happening?
NASCAR Weekend: Darlington Raceway
Xfinity Series: Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200, Saturday, 3:30 pm ET
Cup Series: Goodyear 400, Sunday, 3:00 pm ET
It’s Throwback Weekend at Darlington Raceway, which means that racing fans will get to see all kinds of retro paint schemes on their favorite drivers’ cars.
The track itself runs 1.366 miles, and the oval has a unique egg shape. The racing surface is challenging because of its narrowness, which is why it has the nickname “Too Tough to Tame.”
Cup Series Last Race Review
Last week, Denny Hamlin raced to victory in the Cup Series at the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway. He hadn’t won at this track in a decade, but once he took the lead in Lap 126 of 400, he didn’t look back. He led 274 of the last 275 laps, with Lap 326 getting credited to pole winner Christopher Bell, who was side-by-side with Hamlin after the last restart on that lap. Hamlin ended up beating Bell by a whopping 4.617 seconds.
Hamlin has now six wins at Martinsville, the most among active full-time drivers. It was his first win in 2025 and the 55th in his career in the Cup Series. Bubba Wallace finished third for the second race in a row, falling out of second after the final restart. Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson rounded out the top five.
NASCAR Xfinity Series Last Race Review
In Xfinity action last week, Austin Hill won the U.S. Marine Corps 250, also at Martinsville. The win gave him some payback after Martinsville denied him a place in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship 4 in 2023.
Hill got around three wrecking cars in the last corner of overtime and beat Sheldon Creed by 0.190 seconds. Yes, that’s Sheldon Creed, coming in second yet again.
The last stage of the race was marred by multiple cautions, and Hill was able to snatch victory after he hit Justin Allgaier, sending him into Sammy Smith, and then crept by on the bottom, with Creed behind him.
Allgaier recovered and finished third, but Hill got the victory despite leading the race for less than a quarter-mile. Brennan Poole and Sam Mayer rounded out the top five.
Motorsports Bets Formula 1: Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit, Sunday, 1:00 am ET
The Suzuka Circuit entered the Formula 1 rotation in 1986 and immediately became one of the drivers’ favorites. Historically, the Japanese GP has come near the end of the calendar to make the race more important in the final drivers’ standings, but in 2024, Formula 1 decided to regionalize its calendar and so this race made a more logical fit early, coming after the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix.
It’s the only figure-eight circuit, with a track running 5.8km. Because barriers, gravel and grass are so close to the racing surface, even small mistakes can have major consequences. Because of the high-energy loads, tires go through a wringer – and so Pirelli has nominated its hardest compounds. This means grid position (and access to clear air) is important – as does the narrow track at Suzuka, which limits passing opportunities.
At the Chinese Grand Prix, McLaren continued its new-found dominance of Formula 1 as Oscar Piastri took first and teammate Lando Norris took second. Piastri led the 56-lap race from wire to wire. Much of the drama of the race centered on whether drivers would pit once or twice, and the top five drivers only needed one stop. George Russell of Mercedes came in third, ahead of Max Verstappen of Red Bull and Esteban Haas rounding out the top five.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari had finished fifth and sixth, respectively, but the Ferrari drivers were disqualified. Leclerc’s was disqualified because it had raced below the minimum of 800kg of weight. Hamilton was racing with a skid block that was thinner than the minimum requirement. And so Hamilton’s F1 misery with his new team continues.
A weekend that’s @TooToughToTame. pic.twitter.com/nbvlKhEpf1
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 2, 2025
Motorsports Bets on NASCAR and Formula 1
The NASCAR races and the Formula 1 event will all show up on just about all sports books, although some may not carry the Xfinity Series event. There are a variety of props that you will find, including the top driver in each race, using a moneyline. You will also find odds for drivers to finish in the top three and top five at some books, as well as head-to-head props. For example, you might find a head-to-head prop between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, you would simply choose which driver is going to finish ahead of the other, so your payoff would depend on your choice beating the other driver no matter where they finish in the overall standings.
It’s important to remember that wagering on auto races brings in a lot of variables that are unique to this sport. You can have accidents and pile-ups, particularly in NASCAR, that draw in cars that weren’t part of the original collision and shake up the running order. You can have technical violations, such as what disqualified the Ferrari team from the Chinese Grand Prix, and those can influence your payouts. So there are some more external risk factors in this sport than what you see in some others.
This just makes it important to remember to manage your betting on these events. Once you have your bankroll established – the money you can stand to lose without affecting any of your personal finances – then cap each wager at 1 to 3 percent of that amount. So if you have $5,000 set aside for wagering, don’t wager more than $150 (3%) on any prop, even if it looks like a guarantee – because it is those huge bets on seeming sure things that end up causing problems for bettors.
What are the Winning Picks – now that I know how to bet?
NASCAR Cup Series Goodyear 400: Top 7 Drivers Odds
- Motorsports Bets: Kyle Larson +440
- Denny Hamlin +610
- Tyler Reddick +680
- Ryan Blaney +710
- William Byron +720
- Christopher Bell +1175
- Briscoe +1375
Kyle Larson
Larson now has four top-ten finishes in a row after coming in fifth at Martinsville last weekend. He sits in second place in the driver standings. He also has three top-five finishes in those four races – including a win at Homestead-Miami at the Straight Talk Wireless 400. Larson’s career at Darlington includes a win, seven top-five finishes, nine top-ten finishes, and an average finish of 10.8 over 14 starts.
This is the second-best average finish among the field for Sunday. Last year, he did crash out of this race, but he won the Southern 500 (the fall Darlington race) in 2023 and came in fourth at the 2024 Southern 500.
Denny Hamlin
Hamlin comes in hot after ending a streak of about 30 winless races at the Cook Out 400 last week. His last win came in April 2024 at Dover. He has moved up to sixth place in the 2025 driver standings and has led more laps than any other car in the 2025 Cup Series season. He has cracked the top five two weeks in a row and three times in the last four races.
In 25 races at Darlington, he has four wins, 13 top-five finished, 18 top-ten finishes and an average finish of 8.2. He is the top active driver in all of those categories. In his last five races at Darlington, he has three top-seven finishes, including the last two in a row. He has led laps in 10 straight races here.
Ryan Blaney
Blaney continues to struggle in 2025. He didn’t make it into the top ten in Martinsville last week and sits in tenth place in the driver standings. It’s hard to see things improving much this week as Darlington has historically been a tough place for Blaney. In 16 starts here, he has an average finish of 19.6 and just three top-ten finishes. He has two DNFs – and those came in the last two races here. Even getting into the top ten might be a stretch. Unless you’re finding him in a head-to-head prop wager, I’d stee
NASCAR Xfinity Series Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200: Top 7 Drivers Odds
- Motorsports Bets: Christopher Bell +150
- Ross Chastain +350
- Justin Allgaier +850
- Sam Mayer +900
- Sheldon Creed +1000
- Chase Elliot +1100
- Austin Hill +1100
Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix: Top 7 Drivers Odds
- Motorsports Bets: Lando Norris +141
- Oscar Piastri +183
- Max Verstappen +600
- George Russell +1050
- Charles Leclerc +1125
- Lewis Hamilton +1175
- Yuki Tsunoda +4100
McLaren has two wins in two races. So you have to have both Piastri and Norris on your wager cards again this weekend. Verstappen faces a considerable amount of pressure to get Red Bull back into contention. It’s way too early to rule anyone else out, but Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are all foundering right now. Mercedes is second in the Constructors’ Championship, but it’s a distant second given that we have seen just two races.
What about the rest of the odds table?
An interesting dark horse might well be Liam Lawson – the Red Bull driver who just got sent down to the second-tier Racing Bulls.
He’ll be in this race, and Verstappen made some interesting remarks after the Chinese Grand Prix, indicating that he thought the Racing Bulls car was actually simpler to drive and that Lawson might do a better job in their car than in the RB21.
If Lawson can show Verstappen was right, that could lead to an anomaly for F1 – a significant upset on top of the podium (or just on the podium at all).
When will Lewis Hamilton show up? Yes, he did win the Sprint pole and race in Shanghai. However, the debacle at the Sunday race, with both Hamilton and Ferrari teammate Leclerc getting disqualified, highlighted the frustration that the all-time great has to be feeling.
“Best situation ever”
Yuki Tsunoda is excited to debut for Red Bull Racing at his home race this weekend #F1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/AVfkm1tWEd
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 3, 2025
Formula 1 Odds to Win
Xbet Betting Lines for the Race
Motorsports Bets this Weekend: NASCAR & Formula 1
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