The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season is here, with the Daytona 500 set for Sunday. There are quite a few changes for this season, with many drivers changing teams and the sport introducing a new schedule that will alter the competitive balance for the season. There are more competitive drivers, thanks to improvements in equipment and team shifts, than there have been in a number of years. Can Chase Elliott defend his 2020 NASCAR Cup Series title successfully, or will there be a new champion at the end of the season?
Check out the latest NASCAR betting odds for drivers to win the Series, as well as some of our thoughts about key drivers.
NASCAR Cup Series: Last-Minute Odds to Win the Championship
Kevin Harvick had a terrific 2020, winning nine races at four different tracks. However, a poor performance at just the wrong time kept him out of the Championship 4, and now that he has hit the age of 45, it will be interesting to see how long he can keep up the winning.
Martin Truex Jr and Kyle Busch had down years in 2020, combining to win just a pair of races. Truex should be able to bounce back and get back to winning road course races, which is his forte, which means he will put pressure on Chase Elliott to keep up his winning ways from a year ago. Busch should come in motivated after last year, and just at the age of 35, he has plenty of solid racing seasons ahead of him.
Denny Hamlin won 13 races between 2019 and 2020 combined. However, the competition level in the NASCAR Cup Series has jumped up a bit, which will keep him from winning more than four or five in the 2021 campaign.
Speaking of Chase Elliott, he comes in with unusually high expectations as the defending champion. He might win more races in 2021 than he did in 2020, although that win at the 2020 All-Star Race was a sign of great things to come.
Kyle Larson should also come in with plenty of motivation after having his 2020 campaign end due to reasons away from the track. He should pick up two or three wins over the course of the season, continuing an uptick that had begun in 2019.
Brad Keselowski has won at least three races in five straight seasons. While he has a reputation for waiting late in the game and then winning a few in a row, he could surprise observers with a stronger start to 2021 than usual, especially after his disappointing finish in 2020.
It will be interesting to see how Ryan Blaney bounces back at the Daytona 500 this weekend…and beyond. It was at Daytona a year ago that Blaney suffered a crash that sent him to the hospital for a lengthy recovery period. That likely led to him winning less than he probalby should have once he was out, but now he has had the winter to complete his recovery.
What about Joey Logano? He had a couple of wins last year and tends to rise to the occasion in the playoff rounds, but the higher level of competition this year means that he will need to do that rising a bit sooner this time around.
NASCAR Betting Odds
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