NASCAR Nate: Cook Out Southern 500 Best Bets

NASCAR NATE: COOK OUT SOUTHERN 500 BEST BETS – Howdy folks, after a brief NASCAR hiatus, I’m back to preview a little Sunday evening action in Darlington, South Carolina.

Darlington Raceway is a tricky track with a sort of egg-shaped design that makes for quite a bit of difficulty when configuring the cars. The surface is known for being extremely hard on tires, with a ton of fall-off. Like most types of tracks on the NASCAR circuit, there are guys who tend to reliably perform well here and on comparable types of tracks (Richmond, maybe Auto Club).

Let’s get on with the picks.

Best Outright

Denny Hamlin (+400) 

He’s just really solid on this track. He’s notched a half dozen Xfinity Series wins here, and four more Cup Series victories. He’s better than really solid, he’s been electric at Darlington.

He qualified well, so it’s clear the car is in good shape and he’ll be on the front row after finishing second in qualifying.

There’s just too many good things to ignore here. I know the price isn’t the sexiest but we’re getting perhaps the best driver of this track, starting from the front, with a good pit stall. Everything just looks lined up here for a victory.

Best Prop

Bubba Wallace Top-10 (+125)

Bubba is good on steep-banked intermediate-length tracks and that’s what we have here. He’s been in the top-10 for over half of his laps at Darlington in his current car, and this season he’s been in the top-10 multiple times on tracks that are comparable to Darlington.

We aren’t going to get filthy rich off of these plays this week, but maybe we’ll have a little bit more than we started the day with.