Sports books have Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin as co-favorites this week for the Ford 400 which ends the NASCAR season. Johnson is a virtual lock to win the season ending championship unless disaster strikes and his odds at the Internet sportsbook are pretty low at about 5-1.
Sportsbooks may be overestimating Johnson’s chances of winning this week. He only needs to finish 25th or better to wrap up the points race so he doesn’t have to win. Staying out of trouble will be his main goal in this race. Martin might be the better value at 5-1 odds at sports books. No other drivers have a shot at winning the Chase other than Johnson or Martin. “We obviously have one more race to go,” Johnson said. “We saw in Texas anything can happen so I’m not going to get too excited just yet.”
Jeff Gordon is the third choice at 7-1 to win at sports books along with Greg Biffle. Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch are 9-1 at the Internet sportsbook.
Internet sportsbook stats show that Johnson has had eight career starts at Homestead and his average finish is 13.6. He has never won there with his best finish being second in 2004. Martin has also never won at Homestead as sportsbooks stats show. Sports books numbers have his average finish being 12th with his best a second in 2005.
Five drivers have competed in all nine Homestead races. They are Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte, Elliott Sadler and Tony Stewart. It was Stewart who won that first race back in 1999. Kurt Busch is the only driver to have won the pole twice in this race as sports books statistics have it. Greg Biffle leads all drivers with three victories in this race. The Rousch cars are good choices at sportsbooks in this race as they have won six times.
Looking at sports books stats for this race we see that eight of ten times the race has been won from a top-10 starting position. Greg Biffle won the 2006 race from the 22nd starting position and that is the farthest back a winner has won from as Internet sports books stats show. The three best drivers in terms of average finish in this sports books race are Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick. Sports books stats show that four of the last five races at Homestead have been very close with the average margin of victory being less than a second.