Resource KT
Related Articles
The favorite to win Sunday’s championship race in Phoenix is not a driver chasing the title. And you can probably guess who this driver is.
Kevin Harvick has the best odds of any driver at BetMGM. Harvick, who was knocked out of title contention after finishing 17th in Martinsville, has odds of +350. It’s slightly better than Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano. One of these four drivers will be crowned the 2020 Cup Series champion on Sunday.
Harvick is looking for his 10th win of the season. He’s already been the winningest driver in a single season for over a decade and a victory on Sunday would make him the first driver to win double-digit races since Jimmie Johnson in 2007. Of course, Johnson took the title this season there. Harvick will not win the title this season.
Harvick’s success in 2020 isn’t the only reason he’s the favorite to win Sunday’s race. He’s also been really, really, really, really good at Phoenix since the track was repaved in 2011.
There have been 18 races at Phoenix since the track had new asphalt. Harvick has won seven of those races and hasn’t finished outside the top 10 since finishing 13th in the spring race in 2013. He was then driving for Richard Childress Racing. In his 13 Phoenix starts with Stewart-Haas Racing, Harvick finished no lower than ninth and finished in the top five in 11 of those 13 races.
One of those top five finishes came earlier this year. In March — the last race before NASCAR went on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic — Harvick finished second behind Joey Logano. If Harvick wins in Phoenix, he will also be the first non-title contender driver in NASCAR’s playoff format to win the final race of the season.
Logano is currently the fourth favorite among drivers in the championship. Here’s a look at the odds for the four title favorites.
Phoenix
Sunday, November 8, 3 p.m. ET (NBC)
Denny Hamlin (+500)
Hamlin won the fall race at Phoenix in 2019 to qualify for the title chase. Now he’s back in Phoenix under similar circumstances. Can Hamlin repeat? He was the second-winningest driver in the Cup Series this year after Harvick and finished second in New Hampshire this summer. New Hampshire is by no means a direct comparison to Phoenix, but it is the only other relatively flat one-mile track on the Cup Series circuit.
Chase Elliott (+500)
Elliott has been knocked out of the playoffs in each of Phoenix’s last three seasons. Now he is racing for the first title of his career. Elliott has five top-10 finishes in nine races at Phoenix and finished second in the 2017 fall race. But he did not finish in the top 20 in either of the two fall races at the track. It’s hard to see this repeating itself for a third straight fall unless Elliott is hit by a mechanical failure or is involved in an accident.
Brad Keselowski (+550)
Is Keselowski the smart money favorite? Although his chances are slightly lower than those of Hamlin and Elliott, Keselowski has been the best short-track driver this season. He beat Hamlin in New Hampshire and also won in Richmond in the fall. The car he drove to those two wins is the car he will use on Sunday.
Joey Logano (+650)
How important is Logano’s win this spring? The race was the first in Phoenix for NASCAR’s lower downforce rules on short tracks. The cars had a lot more downforce in the two spring 2019 races. While this win may give Logano the upper hand, the teams are working on their cars and finding speed throughout the season. It can be difficult to get an accurate idea of a race that took place more than seven months ago.
– – – – – – –
Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
More from Yahoo Sports:
