2022 NASCAR Cup Series Win Total Props: Team Penske & 23XI Over/Unders Offering Value
Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images. Pictured: Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford
Earlier this week DraftKings Sportsbook posted driver win props for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season. Along with that it has added team win props, specifically in the form of over/unders on total wins.
While PJ Walsh has you covered on the best driver win props, I'm going to tackle two team over/unders that look quite juicy.
My favorite aspect of these bets is that they don't need to rely on the fact that NASCAR is switching to a new car. Instead, we can look at trends over a wider time frame to get an idea of the strength of each team, and the drivers within those teams.
So here are my two favorite over/unders to bet for the 2022 NASCAR season.
2022 NASCAR Prop Betting Picks
*Odds as of Feb. 5
Team Penske Over 4.5 Wins
In 2022 Team Penske will feature a three-driver stable of Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and rookie Austin Cindric.
Logano is the veteran of the team, heading into his 14th full-time season and 10th overall with Team Penske.
The amazing thing is that he's still only 31 years old (he turns 32 in May). Logano has averaged 2.8 wins per season during his time at Penske and 2.3 since his age-28 season.
Statistics show that drivers tend to perform best between ages 28 and 42, and it's a relatively flat curve during those years. Even if we're conservative, we can pencil Logano in for a two-win season a large percentage of the time.
Logano has traditionally racked up his wins at 1.5- and 2-mile intermediate tracks, short flat tracks, superspeedways and Bristol (winning last year on the dirt track). All but two of his 27 career wins have come in these disciplines.
Next up is "Young" Ryan Blaney. Blaney is just entering the prime of his career having turned 28 in December.
He's racked up at least one win in each of the last five years, including one in 2017 while with Team Penske affiliate, Wood Brothers Racing. Blaney should score a minimum of one win a high probability of the time.
Last year, Blaney had his first multi-win season, taking home checkered flags at Atlanta, Michigan and Daytona.
Finally, Cindric rounds out the Team Penske trio. Cindric, son of Team Penske president Tim Cindric, is most known for his road course prowess, picking up five wins in the NASCAR Xfinity Series on these tracks.
It seems scalable for him too.
He won on a road course in the Truck Series, and he led laps in two of his three Cup Series road course starts. In the other, he had his best finish and ran the sixth-most fast laps.
If we comfortably assign three wins to Team Penske, the amazing coverage it has between the various disciplines should be enough to find two more wins with relative ease.
As a whole, Team Penske has no fewer than five wins in every season since expanding to a three-car operation in 2018. That includes an average win total of 6.5 per year.
Notably, in 2016, which is the closest comparable horsepower and spoiler combination to what the Next Gen car will feature in 2022, Team Penske picked up seven wins in a two-car effort.
The bet: Team Penske — Over 4.5 Wins (-105)
23XI Under 1.5 Wins
The team owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin expands to a two-car operation for 2022 with the addition of veteran Kurt Busch. He joins Bubba Wallace to round out this team that has an affiliation with Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR).
Starting with Busch, on the surface you might look and see that he has picked up at least one win in every season except his rookie year and the two years he spent with underfunded teams. That includes nine wins over the last eight years for an average of 1.1 per year.
But that's likely his peak.
I don't expect monster things from Kurt outside of his sponsorship. The older Busch brother is 43 and will turn 44 partway through the campaign.
Unfortunately, drastic fall off tends to happen beyond age 42, although this does vary from driver to driver.
Looking at Busch, there are signs that the drop began last year — the worst of his three seasons statistically with Chip Ganassi Racing.
In 2019 he had an average finish of 13.1 and a driver rating of 87.9. Those numbers remained steady in 2020, with 13.5 and 87.2 numbers, respectively, in each category.
However, in 2021 his average finish plummeted to 15.5 and his driver rating similarly tanked down to 82.7.
He did pick up one win at Atlanta, but that was the only race in which he led more than 13 laps. He broke the 13 laps led mark four times in 2019 and five times in 2020.
Now he transitions to a team that is at best a lateral move. Yes, the affiliation with JGR is nice, but 23XI didn't exactly shine in reliability and performance last year. In fact, other JGR affiliates have struggled in recent years, with Furniture Row Racing being the notable exception to the rule.
Turning to Wallace, he picked up his first and only Cup Series win last year at Talladega. Wallace is absolutely a threat to win at superspeedways, but so are about 20 other drivers. Outside of superspeedways, Wallace had only one top-10 finish last year.
In fact, three of his eight career top 10s that didn't come at superspeedways came at the 2.5-mile flat tracks of Indianapolis and Pocono. Unfortunately for Wallace, the Cup Series now runs on the road course at Indy and Pocono is down to one race per year.
I have a hard time seeing this team picking up any wins outside of the superspeedway races, which gives it four shots to win twice.
The odds aren't good and the -200 line doesn't scare me one bit.
The bet: 23XI — Under 1.5 Wins (-200)
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