Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2024. Here at Win The Race we had a great 2023 of NASCAR Betting. We ended the season up 63.315 units on the NASCAR Cup Series. With 2023 now entirely behind us, its time to look ahead to the 2024 NACAR season. The season starts in just over a month with the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum on February 4th.
This year my betting content will be available in a few different ways. First, all bets will be first posted to the Win the Race Discord for our members before getting posted anywhere else. My full card will also be tracked each week here. For bets that are supported by the app, I’ll be tracking my NASCAR Cup Series bets, along with bets for other sports on the Action Network. You can follow me there, @GregMatherne84. Finally, I’ll be posting a weekly best bets article mid week over at The Daily Downforce.
I don’t make a lot of season long bets. I don’t like having my money locked up on a bet for 10-11 months. That said, this year I have found one season long bet that I’m going to make. So lets dig into who I’m betting on, or I suppose I should say, who I’m betting against.
Ty Gibbs, Under 0.5 Wins | +120 (Caesars Sportsbook)
I’ve got two main reasons that I’m betting against Gibbs this year. First, threat of resurgent veterans getting wins. Second, the pure difficulty that is involved in getting your first Cup Series win. Lets look at each in turn.
The veterans are going to make winning hard
I think this will be the first year in some time that we don’t have a first time winner in the Cup Series. There are a number of veteran drivers who had lackluster 2023 seasons that could bounce back and suck up wins. This means that there are simply not going to be a lot of opportunities for first time winners.
Chase Elliott got his first win in 2018. Since then Elliott had multiple wins every season until last year when his season was derailed by an injury. An Elliott teammate, Alex Bowman was also held winless in 2023 due to injury. If both of those drivers come back strong, as I expect they will, there are likely 3-4 available wins off the board. I also expect that Brad Keselowski will find his way into victory lane in 2024. Legacy Motor Club also found a lot of speed at the end of 2023. Combined with the move to Toyota I expect that Erik Jones will be a contender at many races.
Winning at this level is hard
In his 51 starts Gibbs has 11 Top 10 finishes. He has four Top 5 finishes. And he hasn’t finished inside the Top 3 at all. He has lead 114 laps, with 102 of those coming at Bristol this fall. Now, Gibbs has shown an improvement in his consistency and overall performance in recent races. Towards the end of 2023 he had six top 10 finishes in the last16 races. That is a very respectable 37.5% Top 10 rate, meaning he is running towards the front where he could have chances to win. That said, lets not forget just how hard it is to get your first Cup Series win.
Assuming he starts all 36 races, Gibbs will end 2024 having run 86 races. Kyle Larson, in clearly inferior equipment to Gibbs, didn’t win until race 99. Like Larson, Chase Elliott, didn’t win until race 99 despite being in top tier HMS equipment. William Byron, who like Elliot was in HMS equipment didn’t win until race 98. Tyler Reddick, in slightly poorer RCR equipment didn’t win until race 92. Have drivers won sooner? Sure, Denny Hamlin won in race 21, Martin Truex Jr won before race 60, in 2021 Bell won in race 38, and just last year Shane Van Gisbergen won his first ever Cup Series race. That said, given how many great drivers have taken years to win, it wouldn’t be a shock if it took another season for Gibbs to find victory lane.
Bottom Line
If there is a first time winner in 2024, I think Gibbs is the best candidate to get that win. He is showing improvement, he is in top tier equipment, and he has the pure talent needed to win. That said, I think his odds of winning are more like 50/50, which means that getting +120, which is an implied 45.45%, means we are getting a decent edge that I’m going to bit on. I bet 1 unit to win 1.2 on this bet. I would take it down to +115, but not under that.
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