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Betting NASCAR this Weekend? Last weekend, NTT IndyCar started their 2025 season with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, with cars zooming around a road course in this city on the western coast of Florida.
Entering 2025 as the reigning IndyCar champion, Alex Palou faced pressure but triumphed, defeating teammate and six-time champ Scott Dixon by 2.8669 seconds despite Dixon’s communication issues in the final laps. Palou’s victory marked his twelfth win after starting from eighth on the grid.
In third place was Josef Newgarden, a two-time series champion himself. Scott McLaughlin and Kyle Kirkwood rounded out the top five. The next IndyCar race is set for March 23 at The Thermal Club in California.
Betting NASCAR this Weekend on Phoenix Raceway
This week, the only major motor sport up and running is NASCAR. The top two stock car circuits will run at Phoenix Raceway. The Xfinity Series race will run late Saturday afternoon, and the Cup Series event will run earlier on Sunday afternoon. Last week, Christopher Bell raced to victory in the Cup Series at the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
Bell secured his second consecutive win by overtaking Kyle Busch and fending off 2024 EchoPark Automotive GP champion William Byron for five laps, ultimately winning by 0.433 seconds. Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott (who spun and broke a toe link), and Busch completed the top five. Bell now boasts 11 Cup Series victories. Let’s explore this week’s motorsports events and sports betting opportunities.
Betting NASCAR Xfinity and Cup Series Events
An interesting wrinkle about this week’s race is NASCAR’s operation of the “option tire.” This showed up at Richmond last year in the summer race, and the purpose is to boost grip. This can add pace, but they tend to wear a lot faster than the primary tires, so this choice can help a driver move up over a short period of time, but this could also mean having to pit sooner – and give up that advantage.
Daniel Suarez
At Virginia last year, Daniel Suarez used the option tire effectively and ended up leading 93 laps and finishing in the top ten. NASCAR has said that if this option tire does well in the spring Phoenix race, it would be the primary tire in November, when Phoenix hosts the Championship 4.
Phoenix has different degrees of banking. Turns 1 and 2 are at 9 degrees while Turns 3 and 4 are at 11. The frontstretch has 9 degrees, while the backstretch has just 3 degrees. The corners are unusually tight and the straightaways are unusually long. This means that speed and handling both come at a premium. Winners here have been able to leverage track position and long-haul speed and combine those with savvy pit strategy.
How can I bet on these events?
You’ll find more sportsbooks offering action on the Cup Series than on the Xfinity Series, but you can still find wagers on both. For both races, you’ll be able to find odds on the winning driver, but in the Cup Series race, you’ll be more likely to find odds on a driver to finish in the Top 3, Top 5 or even Top 10. You can also find odds on some head-to-head wagers, where you pick one of a pair of drivers to finish ahead of the other.
Different races feature varying tracks in NASCAR, including road courses, superspeedways, and ovals. This week, Phoenix Raceway, a low-banked mile tri-oval known for its unique dog-leg design, hosts the race. Strategy here differs from traditional ovals. Winning picks will consider which drivers have historically performed well at Phoenix and similar tracks.
Betting NASCAR Xfinity Series: Call 811.Com Every Dig. Every Time. 200 (Saturday, 5:00 pm ET)
What are the winning picks – now that I know how to bet? Let’s start with the Xfinity Series race first. Here are the Top 10’s driver odds to win:
- Justin Allgaier +370
- Aric Almirola +400
- Alex Bowman +420
- Jesse Love +840
- Sheldon Creed +1000
- Sam Mayer +1050
- Sammy Smith +1125
- Connor Zilisch +1200
- Carson Kvapil +1350
- Taylor Gray +1450
Chandler Smith
Last year, Smith won the race but is absent from the odds list this time. Jesse Love and Sheldon Creed, who finished second and third, are among the top contenders. Creed, known for consistently finishing as a runner-up, is back again. Cup Series regulars Aric Almirola and Alex Bowman are also in the mix, choosing to race here for track familiarity, a common strategy for drivers preparing for upcoming Cup Series events.
Almirola does well at short, flat tracks, and while he’s rarely a threat in the Cup Series, he’s the favorite here for a reason. Jesse Love is a driver on the cusp of consideration for moving up to the Cup Series, so he’s an interesting pick. I’d be more likely to pick him as a slight value choice than Creed, simply because Creed ends up in second (or in the top five) so often without winning.
Betting NASCAR Cup Series: Shriners Children’s 500 (Sunday, 3:30 pm ET)
Now, let’s look at the Shiners Children’s 500 – the Cup Series event.
- Christopher Bell +440
- Ryan Blaney +520
- Kyle Larson +640
- William Byron +780
- Joey Logano +890
- Chase Elliott +900
- Denny Hamlin +970
- Chase Briscoe +1075
- Tyler Reddick +1275
- Ross Chastain +1475
Christopher Bell
Bell could, of course, go back-to-back-to-back. He’s the favorite here because of his last two races (and his potential). However, the law of averages starts creeping up here, and the likelihood of getting spun at the wrong time increases with each flawless race. With that said, Bell is an expert on shorter flat tracks, and he won the spring race here in 2024. He also raced well at the Championship 4.
On shorter flat tracks in 2024, he led the Cup Series with a 4.3 average finish and had the best Driver Rating by a huge gap. In the Next Gen car, he has an average finish of 5.5 over his last four races without incidents. He looked like he backed off a bit near the end of the Championship 4 last year, allowing the four drivers who were still in contention for the title to go for the victory. He finished third in Stage 1, second in Stage 2, led a race-high 143 laps, had the second-best Total Speed Ranking and Driver Rating, before settling back to finish fifth.
Ryan Blaney
Blaney is still looking for his first victory at Phoenix Raceway. With the Next Gen car, he has the best Next Gen Speed Ranking at Phoenix, the top average finish (2.8) and a seven-race streak of top-five finishes. In 2024 at shorter flat tracks, he had the second-best Driver Rating and Track Type Total Speed Ranking. In 11 of his last 12 races here, he has finished in the top ten.
In last year’s spring race, he started in 16th before ending up seventh in Stage 1, sixth in Stage 2 and fifth overall. In the fall 2023 race, on the way to his title, he started in 15th, finished Stage 1 in 10th, moved up to sixth during Stage 2, and then came in second overall in the race. In his last three Phoenix races before that, his results were a pair of runner-ups and a fourth-place result.
William Byron
Byron won here in the spring 2023 race; in the Next Gen car, he has the second-best average finish (8.3) and the second-best Driver Rating. In four of his last five races here, he has top-six finishes. In the Championship 4 last year, when he was jousting for the title, he looked outstanding but could not get by the pair from Penske.
He finished fourth in the first two stages, led 19 laps and then finished in third overall. He came in 18th in the 2024 spring race, but that had a lot to do with a Denny Hamlin spin in Lap 209 that basically turned the field upside down, and Byron didn’t have time to recover.
Chase Briscoe
One interesting prop here lets you pick the stage winners as well. Briscoe comes with +1000 odds to win the opening stage, which runs just 60 laps. That’s about 40 fewer laps than the assumed top fuel run.
So cars that start up front tend to finish up front in the first stage as they don’t have to pit. During the Gen 7 era, we’ve seen six races at Phoenix, and the worst starting position for any Stage 1 winner here was Tyler Reddick, who came up from sixth in the spring race last year.
The pole sitter here has won Stage 1 twice in the Gen 7 era. If you throw out the 2022 spring race, when there was a competition caution, the pole sitter has not finished worse than third in Stage 1, with an average finish of 2.16.
Briscoe is the favorite to win the pole (+375 or so, depending on the book). He’s using the car that Martin Truex Jr won the pole with at the Championship 4 last year and which Briscoe has won the pole at the Daytona 500 in the pasts.
The desert’s diamond awaits. pic.twitter.com/ifwErBPntE
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 5, 2025
NASCAR Odds to Win
Xbet Betting Lines for the Race
Betting NASCAR this Weekend
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