The Daytona 500 is the most prestigious NASCAR race of the year – and it is one of the most unpredictable for wagering nationwide, including Florida sports betting.
That’s because cars at Daytona International Speedway run in huge, high-speed packs, where one slip can cause 10 or 15 or even 20 cars to wreck all at once. Upsets are often the order of the day in the Daytona 5000 and that means some drivers who go in as favorites wind up disappointed, or with a damaged race car.
At Florida.Bet.com, we wanted to know which drivers have the worst average finishing position in Daytona superspeedway races (both the 500 and the 400-mile summer race). Here’s what we found:
Rank | Driver | Average Starting Position | Average Finish Position | Difference |
1 | Chase Elliott | 10.3 | 21.3 | 11.0 |
2 | William Byron | 13.6 | 23.1 | 9.5 |
3 | Daniel Suarez | 20.2 | 27.7 | 7.5 |
4 | Kyle Larson | 15.0 | 22.0 | 7.0 |
5 | Ryan Blaney | 13.4 | 19.7 | 6.3 |
6 | Christopher Bell | 12.7 | 17.7 | 5.0 |
7 | Tyler Reddick | 20.0 | 24.9 | 4.9 |
8 | Ryan Preece | 19.9 | 24.5 | 4.6 |
9 | Brad Keselowski | 18.0 | 22.2 | 4.2 |
10 | Martin Truex Jr. | 17.3 | 21.3 | 4.0 |
* Driver information from Racing-Reference.info; all drivers must have 10 or more races at Daytona to be included
The only legal online sportsbook in Florida is Hard Rock Bet, but if more Florida sportsbook apps become available, we’ll have reviews of them that you can rely on.
Why is there such a dramatic difference between starting spots and finishing results for Daytona races, including the Daytona 500? There are a few factors.
The Daytona 500 has a qualifying format unlike any other race in the NASCAR Cup series, or indeed any major race anywhere.
This year’s qualifying begins Wednesday night (starting at 8:15 Eastern, FS1). Cars go out one at a time and the fastest time earns the pole position, with the No. 2 time guaranteed the outside of the front row. So far, totally normal. But the top two are the only spots set in that session; the rest of the field for Sunday’s 500 is determined by Thursday’s two 150-mile qualifying races (7 p.m., FS1).
Starting positions can get scrambled pretty severely after the single-car qualifying on Wednesday, making even the starting grid unpredictable.
Once the 40-car field is set, the real action begins in Sunday’s race (2:30 p.m., FOX). Over the span of 200 laps on the 2.5-mile superspeedway tri-oval, the Daytona 500 gives fans the closest racing they’re likely to see all season. It’s not unusual for the entire field to be separated by a couple of seconds, at least in the early laps.
And that’s when “The Big One” tends to happen. One wrong move at the front of the pack could lead to an accident that involves half the field, and neither the most skilled driver nor the best-prepared team can do anything about it.
The driver at the top of our list is former Cup series champion Chase Elliott. The difference between his average starting spot and average finishing position in Daytona races is 11 places, the biggest gap of any active driver. He was eliminated in wrecks in the 2018, 2019 and 2023 Daytona 500. In second on our list is his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron (a difference of 9.5 places), who had little success in the Daytona 500 until he won the race last year.
It works the other way too. Some drivers with underfunded teams, who are rarely competitive in any other race, can finish well if they avoid all the wrecks (or only sustain minor damage) and just finish. For instance, B.J. McLeod has never started better than 30th in any Daytona race in the Cup Series, but he has four top-20 finishes there including his only two career top-10 runs.
At Hard Rock Bet Florida Sportsbook, the four favorites for Sunday’s Daytona 500 are Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, all at +1100 odds. Bettors can glean two bits of information from that list. First, past success in NASCAR’s opener does not correlate with the odds; of those four, only Logano has won a Daytona 500 and that was in 2015. Second, those are long odds for a favorite, or co-favorites. Oddsmakers account for the unpredictable nature of NASCAR racing at superspeedways, where a great run can literally go up in smoke (and crumpled metal) in an instant and an unlikely winner is not so shocking.
USA Today Network photo by Nigel Cook/News-Journal
Author
Jim Tomlin has 30-plus years of experience in Florida journalism, mostly in sports. The University of South Florida graduate has worked at the Tampa Bay Times, FanRag, Saturday Down South and Saturday Tradition and now lends his expertise to FloridaBet.com as a writer and editor.
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