- Chase Briscoe is +800 to win after winning at Chicagoland, Las Vegas and Charlotte and finishing fourth at Kansas.
- Kyle Larson is +500 to win the race, and he needs only nine points to clinch a second straight title.
- Tyler Reddick, who leads the series with six wins and won Homestead in 2024, is the smaller lean at +750.
- Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell must win the race and score at least 17 and 14 stage points, respectively, to catch Larson.
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – The NASCAR championship pick for Sunday’s Cup Series finale is Chase Briscoe at +800 to win the race, because Kyle Larson’s 67-point lead has all but decided the title and Briscoe has won at Chicagoland, Las Vegas and Charlotte since July.
The Title Market Has No Bet In It
Larson leads Christopher Bell by 67 points and Denny Hamlin by 70, and he can clinch as early as lap 80, when the first stage ends, the Associated Press reported. The second stage ends on lap 165 of 267, so a strong first two stages could settle a second straight championship before the final run. The 267-lap race goes green at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.
The title market offers nothing to play, because under NASCAR’s clinching scenarios Bell and Hamlin each need a win, at least 14 and 17 stage points respectively, and a Larson collapse.
That moves the action to the race-winner market, where the seven shortest prices on the NASCAR betting board already carry a combined break-even rate near 90 percent before the other 30-odd drivers are counted. A margin that wide means a driver’s results have to clearly beat his number to pay off. The table shows those seven with their finishes at the fall’s three 1.5-mile ovals, Kansas, Las Vegas and Charlotte.
| Driver | Odds | Break-even | Kansas | Las Vegas | Charlotte |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Larson | +500 | 16.7% | 1st | 2nd | 6th |
| Denny Hamlin | +550 | 15.4% | 3rd | 11th+ | 5th |
| Ryan Blaney | +600 | 14.3% | 5th | 5th | 3rd |
| Christopher Bell | +750 | 11.8% | 6th | 11th+ | 2nd |
| Tyler Reddick | +750 | 11.8% | 11th+ | 3rd | 8th |
| Chase Briscoe | +800 | 11.1% | 4th | 1st | 1st |
| William Byron | +1000 | 9.1% | 7th | 6th | 11th+ |
Finishes outside the top 10 are shown as 11th+.
Briscoe’s Fall Form Is The Edge
Briscoe led 175 laps in winning at Las Vegas on Oct. 4, won at Charlotte a week later and finished fourth at Kansas on Sept. 27. Add his July 5 win at Chicagoland and he has won three of the four 1.5-mile ovals the Cup Series has run since early July, leaving out Atlanta, where pack racing plays differently.
His average finish across the fall trio is 2.0, against 3.0 for Larson and 4.3 for Ryan Blaney. Yet his +800 asks him to win only 11.1 percent of the time, while Larson’s +500 asks 16.7 and Blaney’s +600 asks 14.3.
Larson’s Kansas win came with 235 laps led, so the gap is narrower than the averages suggest. Four starts is also a thin sample, and none came at Homestead, where Briscoe finished fourth in March 2025 after starting fourth.
Starting spot is not decisive here, since Reddick won from the pole in 2024 and Larson won in March 2025 from 14th. At +800 the bet needs Briscoe to win about one race in nine, and three in four is not a pace anyone expects to hold.
Larson Is The Right Favorite At The Wrong Price
Larson has won two of the past four Homestead races and has only two finishes outside the top 15 in 12 starts there, the AP reported, and he has rejected racing conservatively to protect the lead. He also went winless in the regular season before taking three of the nine Chase races. That record is what +500 already pays for, and it leaves the shortest price on the board with the least room for a bad day like his 34th at Phoenix on Oct. 18.
Hamlin at +550 has three Homestead wins and finished third and fifth in the last two races there. His average Chase finish is 11.22, though, and needing 17 stage points on top of a win forces his team to chase track position at laps 80 and 165. At Martinsville on Nov. 1, a pit-strategy mistake left him with no stage points and a sixth-place finish after starting from the pole.
Blaney at +600 has never won at Homestead, finishing second in 2024 and leading 124 laps in March 2025 without the win. He has not won on a 1.5-mile oval this fall either.
The Smaller Lean Is Reddick
Reddick leads the series with six wins. The latest came at Phoenix, where he passed Briscoe with 17 laps to go on Oct. 18. He also won at Kansas in April, and at Homestead in October 2024 after leading 97 laps from the pole.
His fall results on the 1.5-mile ovals are the soft spot, with a third at Las Vegas, an eighth at Charlotte and a finish outside the top 10 at Kansas. At +750 he is priced the same as Bell, who has one win this season, so Reddick is worth a small play on the legal sports betting board without being the pick.
The National Weather Service forecast for Homestead, issued Thursday morning, shows no daytime rain Sunday, a high near 83 and an east wind of 3 to 7 mph, with a 20 percent chance of showers Sunday night. A dry afternoon keeps the full 267 laps and all three stages in play, which the stage-point math for Hamlin and Bell requires.
