How to bet on NASCAR

The menu

Most books deal the same handful of NASCAR markets, and the bigger the race, the longer the menu.

• To win the race. One price for every driver, plus often a "field" price that covers everyone not listed.
• Top finishes. Top 3, top 5 or top 10, a yes or no on whether a driver finishes in that group.
• Matchups. Two drivers, and you pick which one finishes ahead of the other. Some books group three or four.
• Props. Pole position, fastest lap, the winning manufacturer, how many cautions, and on the big races a lot more.
• Futures. The season championship, priced from before the first race to the last.

Why the outright is the book's favorite

Turn every price on a race-winner board into a percentage and add them up. On a two-sided game the total is around 104 or 105. On a race with three dozen or more cars it is usually far higher, because the book can shade every longshot a little and nobody notices (who checks whether the 30th driver should be +5000 or +8000?). The implied probability page shows the sum.

That doesn't make outrights unplayable. It means a driver has to be badly mispriced before the bet is worth anything, and that the cut works against you every week you bet them. Say you put $10 a race on a driver at +800. You win $80 when he wins, and he has to win better than one race in nine for you to come out ahead.

Matchups are the honest bet

A matchup is a two-way bet, so its cut is visible. Two drivers at -115 each add up to 107 percent, a cut of about 6.5 percent. That is more than a football spread at -110 but much less than a race-winner board, and you are betting on something you can actually handicap: one car against one other car, on a track where you can look at how both have run.

This is where I'd spend most of my NASCAR money. The public bets the names at the top of the board to win. Matchups between two drivers in the middle of the field get far less attention, and a book that doesn't hear much about a price doesn't always move it fast.

Tracks are different sports

A NASCAR season runs on very different tracks, and form at one kind tells you little about another. On the big superspeedways the cars run in tight packs and one wreck can collect a big part of the field, so results are close to a lottery and I'd keep stakes small there. Road courses reward a particular skill, and some drivers who run mid-pack on ovals do much better on them. Short tracks and the intermediate ovals are where speed in practice and qualifying tends to mean the most.

So I'd judge a driver by how he has run on that type of track, not by last week. Many books post their prices early in the week and move them after practice and qualifying, when everybody can see who has speed. If you have an opinion before then, that is when the number is softest.

The rules that grade the bet

Read the house rules for motor racing before your first bet, because they decide more NASCAR tickets than anything on the track.

Most books grade on the official result as it stands when the race ends, and ignore later penalties or changes. A driver usually has to start the race for a bet on him to have action. In a matchup, a driver who crashes out still gets a finishing position from the laps he completed, so the other car only has to keep going to win you the bet. Races get stopped for rain, and when a race is shortened but made official, most books pay on that result. If it is postponed past the book's cut-off, bets can be voided. The details vary from book to book, and I'd check them rather than assume.

Small and steady

NASCAR runs most weekends from February to November, so there is always another race. Treat it like any long season: pick a bet size of 1 or 2 percent of your bankroll and keep it there. Outrights and top-10 longshots will lose many weeks in a row even when your read is good, and a bankroll sized for that is the only way to still be betting when one comes in.