Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Raceway ends the 26-race regular season for the NASCAR Cup Series – and it is one of the most unpredictable races 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 at the 2.5-mile superspeedway – 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 season-opening Daytona 500 and the 400-mile summer race). Here’s what we found:
| Driver | Avg. Start | Avg. Finish | Difference |
| Chase Elliott | 10.7 | 21.0 | 10.3 |
| William Byron | 13.1 | 21.7 | 8.6 |
| Kyle Larson | 15.3 | 21.9 | 6.6 |
| Daniel Suarez | 21.2 | 26.8 | 5.6 |
| Ryan Blaney | 13.6 | 19.1 | 5.5 |
| Christopher Bell | 13.4 | 18.9 | 5.5 |
| Ryan Preece | 20.5 | 25.2 | 4.7 |
| Joey Logano | 13.9 | 18.5 | 4.6 |
| Brad Keselowski | 18.5 | 22.3 | 3.8 |
| Tyler Reddick | 19.3 | 23.0 | 3.7 |
* 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 Coke Zero Sugar 400? There are a few factors.
Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7:30 p.m., NBC) is the final Cup race before NASCAR sets the field for the 10-race playoffs, in which 16 drivers compete for the series championship.
Bad things can happen quickly on the super fast 2.5-mile tri-oval during the 160-lap, 400-mile race. 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 10.3 places, the biggest gap of any active driver. Elliott has been eliminated in wrecks at Daytona seven times during his career in NASCAR’s top series and he has never won there in 19 starts.
Even his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron, is second on our list, showing how unpredictable Daytona can be. He has won the Daytona 500 the past two years, including the 2025 season opener, and also captured the 400-mile event in 2020. But Byron also has eight finishes of 25th or worse at Daytona and has been wrecked out of action eight times in his Cup career, so if it seems weird to call his stats disappointing, now you know why.
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 favorites for Saturday’s race are Penske Racing teammates Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano at +900 odds each. The other Penske entry, Austin Cindric is third at +1100, followed by four drivers at +1400 odds.
Bettors can glean two bits of information from that list. First, past success in NASCAR’s opener does not correlate with the odds; each of the three veteran drivers at the top of the odds board own just one Daytona victory each. 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.
There are only two spots left to claim for the playoffs, because a victory gets a driver in automatically and this season has seen 14 different winners.
Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman have the most points among non-winners in 2025 and, if there is no new winner this weekend, they are almost certain locks for the final two playoff spots. However, again, the possibility of an upset winner can never be discounted in the summer 400-mile race on Florida’s east coast. Last season, Harrison Burton stunned the field, winning for the Wood Brothers team by leading only the final lap and clinching an unexpected playoff berth.
And 12 cars were eliminated in wrecks, proving again how difficult it is to pick a winner at Daytona.
Hard Rock has Kyle Larson as the championship favorite as of Aug. 18, with +400 odds, followed by Denny Hamlin (+425), Christopher Bell (+550) and Blaney (+550).
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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