NASCAR betting, odds: William Byron and Kyle Larson are the favorites at Martinsville

The spring race at Martinsville is no longer at night.

Sunday’s race at Martinsville is in the afternoon (3 p.m. ET, FS1) after it was run at night the past three seasons. It’s also the second Martinsville spring race that’s 100 laps shorter than usual. NASCAR shortened the spring race to 400 laps a year ago and that ended up being a good move. The 2022 spring race at the track was terrible thanks to NASCAR’s new car rules.

Those car rules have been changed for short tracks ahead of 2022 and drivers applauded those changes at Phoenix. We’ll hopefully see more passing at Martinsville as drivers don’t get stuck behind each other in dirty air. It was jarring to hear about how aerodynamic turbulence was a big deal on the shortest track on the Cup Series schedule.

The list of favorites for Sunday’s race feature a lot of recent winners and Kyle Larson. The 2021 Cup Series champion is perennially a favorite at this point thanks to his talent and equipment, though we’re not sure that Sunday is a good time to bet Larson. In 16 starts at Martinsville, Larson has just three top-five finishes and four top 10s.

He was second in the fall race at the track a year ago and was fifth in the 2021 spring race, but Larson has led just 180 of the 7,240 laps he’s completed at the paperclip. There are far better tracks to take advantage of Larson’s chances.

Here’s what you need to know to bet Sunday’s race. All odds are from BetMGM.

The favorites

• William Byron (+600)

• Kyle Larson (+600)

• Christopher Bell (+600)

• Denny Hamlin (+700)

• Martin Truex Jr. (+900)

• Joey Logano (+900)

• Ryan Blaney (+900)

Byron won the spring race a year ago at Martinsville and has six top-10 finishes in 10 starts. Bell won the fall race for his first top five at the track. Hamlin leads active drivers with five wins at Martinsville, while Truex Jr. has three wins and all of them have come in the past seven races at the track. Logano’s only Martinsville win came in the 2018 fall race, and Blaney has the best average finish of every driver at the track at 9.7.

Good mid-tier value

• Kyle Busch (+1400)

• Brad Keselowski (+2000)

Busch has 21 top-10 finishes in 35 starts and his 29th-place finish in the 2022 fall race was his first outside the top 20 since the spring of 2012. Keselowski has two wins at Martinsville and an average finish of 12.0. We think he could be near the front for a good portion of Sunday’s race.

Don’t bet this driver

• Josh Berry (+2000)

Berry has done an admirable job filling in for Chase Elliott and pushed Larson at the end of the Richmond race. He’s very good at short tracks. But +2000 is too short for a substitute driver.

Looking for a long shot?

• AJ Allmendinger (+20000)

Allmendinger has two top fives and seven top 10s in 23 Martinsville starts. His average finish at the track is better than Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, Erik Jones, Larson, Tyler Reddick and others. Is Allmendinger going to win? Probably not. But you don’t find this combination of stats and odds very often.