2026 South Point 400 Betting Race Picks

Date/Time: Sunday October 4th, 2026. 5:30PM (EST)
Where: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
TV: USA

On Sunday, NASCAR’s Cup Series returns to Sin City for the running of the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Back in March, Denny Hamlin earned his first win of the season with his victory in the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas. The Vegas’ victory kick-started a dominant stretch for Hamlin where he would capture wins in 4 of 11 races and capture the points lead which he would carry all the way through the regular season. After a few mediocre performances to begin the Chase, Hamlin and the #11 team are looking to get back on track at Las Vegas. On Saturday, the #11 team took a step in that direction by winning the pole for Sunday’s South Point 400. As a result, Hamlin will enter Sunday as the betting favorite in his attempt to at another Vegas victory!

Last week, I spoke in detail about the importance of this 3-race stretch at 1.5 mile layouts. From a handicapping perspective, the 1.5 mile layouts at Kansas, Las Vegas, and Charlotte have a lot of similarities. These layouts produce a lot of on-throttle time and fast times yield to the teams/drivers that are producing the best pure speed in the aerodynamic and engineering departments. Though teams will not be rolling out the exact cars every week, I think we should see some correlation in the speed from week to week. For that reason, our handicapping formula this week will once again be based on dynamic averages, prior track history, and we will also look back to last week’s performance at Kansas to gather our expectations for this weekend!

In terms of what we learned at Kansas, I would point out that the most important observation is that the Toyotas no longer have a runaway advantage in the speed department. While the Toyota teams are still producing top speed, the gap to the rest of the competition is not as wide as we seen early in the season. It appears that both Hendrick Motorsports and Team Penske have made gains with their 1.5 mile program. Larson obviously won the race for Hendrick Motorsports but Austin Cindric also delivered his best performance at a non-drafting oval in nearly two years last week at Kansas for Team Penske. More importantly, nearly every driver from those teams showed enough speed to battle the Toyotas and that will be something that we must consider going into the start of Sunday’s South Point 400!

Las Vegas – Notes

• Joey Logano leads all active drivers with 4 career wins at Las Vegas.
• Denny Hamlin (3), Kyle Larson (3), Brad Keselowski (3), William Byron, Alex Bowman, Josh Berry are all formers winners at Las Vegas.
• Kyle Larson (126.9), William Byron (113.8), Christopher Bell (104.9), Denny Hamlin (102.7), and Tyler Reddick (97.8) have the top 5 high average driver ratings over the last 7 races at Las Vegas.
• Denny Hamlin has won the last two races at Las Vegas.
• Daniel Suarez has finished 3rd or better in 2 of the last 4 races at Las Vegas.
• William Byron has finished 4th or better in 3 of the last 4 races at Las Vegas.
• Christopher Bell has finished 4th or better in 3 of the last 4 races at Las Vegas.
• Alex Bowman has finished 7th or better in the last 3 races at Las Vegas.
• Ross Chastain has finished 7th or better in 4 of the last 6 races at Las Vegas.
• Chase Briscoe has finished 8th or better in the last two races at Las Vegas.
• Chase Elliott has finished 10th or worse in 6 of the last 7 races at Las Vegas.
• Ryan Preece has finished 11th or better in the last 3 races at Las Vegas.
• Bubba Wallace has finished 12 or worse in 5 of the last 6 races at Las Vegas.
• Ryan Blaney has finished 16th or worse in the last 4 races at Las Vegas.
• There have been 6 cautions or less in 4 of the last 5 races at Las Vegas.
• The race winner has started from the front row in 5 of the last 7 races at Las Vegas.

Dynamic Averages

Despite losing some momentum in recent weeks, Denny Hamlin has still produced the best performance metrics at the 1.5 mile layouts by a wide margin as everyone will see in our dynamic averages. Hamlin is producing a lucrative 124.1 average rating over the last 5 races these layouts and holds a 20-point margin over Tyler Reddick that ranks 2nd on this list. In general, the Toyotas still have shown the best speed which is evident from the fact that Hamlin, Reddick, Briscoe, and Bell are 4 of the top 5 drivers on the 1.5 mile layouts this season. The only drivers that have even been able to compete with the Toyotas this season are the Hendrick Motorsports teams of Larson, Byron and Elliott who all appear to be trending in the right direction. Needless to say, our dynamic averages are an important handicapping indicator going into Sunday!

Betting Targets

It clearly looks like the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas have brought some speed this weekend to Vegas. All 4 drivers were strong in practice and then put their cars in the top 4 positions in qualifying. If you consider Hamlin’s pole winning speed Saturday, along with his Vegas history, and dominant performance metrics, then it becomes clear that the #11 team is the favorite going into Sunday. With that said, I was relatively surprised to see Hamlin as low as +125 at some sportsbooks following qualifying. I find it very difficult to justify betting on Hamlin at those odds although he remains the driver to beat by a significant margin from a handicapping perspective.

Behind the JGR cars, I do believe that Kyle Larson and William Byron have shown enough speed this weekend and have the handicapping metrics to warrant betting consideration as well. In fact, I think William Byron may be the best “value” on the board among the likely contenders on Sunday. Byron has been showing better speed on a near weekly basis since mid-summer and has an excellent Las Vegas resume. Unfortunately, I don’t see many other drivers that are worthy of dark horse consideration. I really believe this race is between the JGR cars and the Byron/Larson duo. However, I do believe that Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, and Alex Bowman are the drivers that are getting disrespected by odds-makers based on various handicapping angles. All 3 drivers have higher upside than current betting odds suggest and can be considered in both H2H and prop bet formats!

Draftkings South Point 400 Race Optimal Lineup

2026 South Point 400 Betting Race Picks

FINAL

Christopher Bell +600 (1 unit)
Tyler Reddick +1000 (.75 unit)
William Byron +1200 (.75 unit)

H2H Match-Ups and Props

Denny Hamlin -130 over Kyle Larson (3 units)
Alex Bowman -110 over Ryan Preece (2 units)
Austin Cindric +105 finishes Top 10 (2 units)
William Byron +400 finishes Top Chevrolet (.5 unit)

Two Team Parlay

Denny Hamlin +250 wins South Point 400
Chris Buescher +160 finishes Top 10
Risking 1 unit to win: +810