NASCAR: 3 longshot picks to win the 2024 championship
By Asher Fair
With the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship odds released, let’s have a look at three drivers whose odds might be a bit longer than they should be.
Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney won his first NASCAR Cup Series championship with a second place finish in the 2023 season finale at Phoenix Raceway, securing the title by finishing ahead of the other three Championship 4 drivers.
After winning his way into the Championship 4 with a win in the round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway, he bested Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell at Phoenix to secure the title.
Blaney was not the preseason favorite to win the title, having opened up the season at +1000 to claim the trophy. In fact, the preseason favorite didn’t even make it to the playoffs. Which drivers are being most overlooked when it comes to the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship?
We zeroed in on three drivers listed outside of the top five who have, like Blaney did in 2023, odds of +1000 or longer to win the next title.
NASCAR longshots to win 2024 title: No. 1 – Joey Logano
Team Penske’s Joey Logano is listed at +1400 to win the championship at DraftKings Sportsbook, which is offering fans an instant $150 just for placing a single $5 bet.
Since the Championship 4 format was introduced in 2014, Logano has made it in every even-numbered year, and he won the championship in both 2018 and 2022, two seasons in which he was certainly not the top driver throughout the entire season.
Under the current format, he knows how to make his way through the playoffs, and while he was eliminated in the round of 16 in 2023, he has bounced back after disappointment before, winning the 2018 title after not even making the playoffs in 2017.
And don’t forget that he drives for Team Penske, which were seemingly a mid-pack team throughout the entire summer of 2023. Blaney went 15 straight races without a top eight finish, but he and the team showed up and performed when it counted most.