{"id":261078,"date":"2025-11-04T13:08:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T13:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/261078\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T13:08:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T13:08:19","slug":"nascar-cup-series-championship-race-odds-final-showdown-at-phoenix-raceway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/261078\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Cup Series Championship race odds: Final showdown at Phoenix Raceway"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR fans, start your engines! It\u2019s championship time! Our Championship 4<\/a> \u2014 Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin, William Byron and Kyle Larson \u2014 take on their final challenge at Phoenix Raceway this Sunday. Of the four, only Larson is a former champion, while Hamlin has been on the title hunt the longest.<\/p>\n

Who has the advantage, and who will raise the Bill France Cup this weekend? We\u2019re bringing our top questions about the championship race to our NASCAR experts, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. But first, here\u2019s how the odds shake out for the race itself and the title.<\/p>\n

Race winner odds for NASCAR at PhoenixCup Series champion oddsQ&A for NASCAR at Phoenix Championship race<\/p>\n

We\u2019re finally here! What\u2019s your biggest surprise looking at the Championship 4?<\/p>\n

Jeff: I\u2019d say Chase Briscoe based on preseason expectations. Martin Truex Jr. went winless last season, and Briscoe took over the No. 19 car as a relatively unproven driver. He had a somewhat sleepy first third of the season until he figured out the Joe Gibbs Racing cars and suddenly became a Driver of the Year candidate. Briscoe has arguably had the best playoffs of anyone and has arrived here as the top-fives leader of the season to cement himself as one of NASCAR\u2019s elite drivers. It\u2019s no surprise he\u2019s here now, but you could argue it would have been in February.<\/p>\n

Jordan: Based on season results, the Champ 4 doesn\u2019t have a real surprise. These four drivers have been among the best all year, as you have the wins leader (Denny Hamlin), the laps led leader (William Byron) and then two drivers (Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe) who rank near the top in nearly every major statistical category. This is a stacked group of finalists, arguably one of the best we\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

Of the \u201cbig three\u201d teams \u2014 Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske \u2014 only Penske didn\u2019t manage to put a driver in the Championship 4. Do they have some soul-searching to do? What is their approach to this final race?<\/p>\n

Jeff: Honestly, yes. Their run of three straight championships \u2014 largely based on their strength at Martinsville and Phoenix, capitalizing on this format and the location of the one-race finale \u2014 masked some issues. At many tracks, they are a step behind the two other big teams and don\u2019t win races as regularly. Ryan Blaney\u2019s individual success has made Penske look better as well. But with Phoenix departing its role as the championship race spot and the playoff format changing anyway, Penske\u2019s title contention will shift in the coming years. One of their cars might show up and win this weekend \u2014 they\u2019re still good here, after all, and would have been a favorite had Blaney or Joey Logano made it \u2014 but they need to find another gear next season.<\/p>\n

Jordan: Winning the past three championships has masked the fact that Team Penske, across the board, is not consistently fast on a week-to-week, every-type-of-track basis, compared to either Joe Gibbs Racing or Hendrick Motorsports over the past few years. Yes, Blaney is a bit of an exception, but even the No. 12 team still has areas to make gains on intermediate tracks. With NASCAR likely to switch the playoff format next year<\/a>, Penske\u2019s path to the championship will be tougher, and the onus is on the team to meet the challenge and raise its game so it can run with and beat JGR and Hendrick regardless of track type.<\/p>\n

Does Hendrick or JGR have the upper hand going into Phoenix? (Or neither?) What should we be looking for or anticipating about this track?<\/p>\n

Jeff: Fortunately for us, we actually have a full practice session on Friday afternoon to help us judge this week. They can even make full changes to the car, like on an old-school weekend! So that could help us answer this question rather than guessing, but on the surface, it seems pretty even. This might be the most wide-open Championship 4 group yet, and there\u2019s a legitimate case to be made for all of them (they\u2019ve all won here before, even Briscoe in a Stewart-Haas Racing car). I\u2019m not sure I can handicap it other than saying it\u2019s mostly a toss-up on the surface.<\/p>\n

Jordan: A strong case could be made for any of the finalists to win Sunday, with no one driver or team having a clear-cut advantage. All of which should make for a compelling finale.<\/p>\n

Kyle Larson is the only former champion in the field; how much does that experience advantage him over the other three?<\/p>\n

Jeff: What matters most is Championship 4 experience; the rhythm of going through this week with its extra pressure, media obligations, appearances and glaring spotlight is unlike any other in NASCAR. Only Briscoe hasn\u2019t been here before, but he did get to experience this with the Xfinity Series (plus Briscoe is about as even-keeled and chill as they come, so he might not be too fazed anyway).<\/p>\n

Jordan: While on the surface, Champ 4 experience would seemingly be an advantage, history has shown that this is not the case. In recent years, Chase Elliott (2020), Kyle Larson (2021) and Ryan Blaney (2023) all won the title in their first appearance in the finale.<\/p>\n

OK, prediction time! Do you think the championship winner will clinch their title by winning the race? Since 2014 (the first year of the Championship 4), only in 2023 did the title winner not win the race. Does everyone else just get out of the way?<\/p>\n

Jeff: Without seeing the practice first, I\u2019ll say Christopher Bell wins the race. While it\u2019s true some drivers give the Championship 4 extra space or let them go at times, you\u2019re not going to see Blaney or Logano doing that. And Bell might have a fast enough car again at Phoenix to win for the third time in two years here.<\/p>\n

Jordan: The history is that the champion wins this race \u2014 it\u2019s happened every year but once. I predict this continues to be the case, and the race winner will also be crowned the 2026 Cup Series champion.<\/p>\n

Who is your pick for Champion (and is it the same as your original pick)?<\/p>\n

Jeff: I\u2019ll go with Denny Hamlin. This feels like it could finally be his year<\/a>. There\u2019s no Penske car in his way, he has the experience to outrun teammate Briscoe and the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas might be a tick faster than the Hendrick Chevrolets. Maybe I\u2019m overlooking Hamlin\u2019s constant bad luck, but in a year when he\u2019s suing NASCAR, is the oldest driver in the field, has a new crew chief and has been the most outspoken critic of a playoff format that is about to go away? Yeah, that seems like a very \u201cNASCAR!\u201d thing to happen.<\/p>\n

Jordan: Everything seems to be falling in place for Denny Hamlin to finally win his first-ever Cup championship. And in what feels like a wide-open title race, the fact that Hamlin was able to get a jumpstart on preparing for the finale by winning the opening semifinal-round race is definitely an advantage, as five times in nine years the driver who\u2019s done that race has gone on to win the championship. Hamlin is very aware of this stat and has acknowledged the advantage he\u2019s had and utilized. Plus, the idea that Hamlin wins the championship in the same year his team is embroiled in a federal lawsuit against NASCAR, with the trial set to begin December 1, is a storyline that seems too preposterous to think it could be real.<\/p>\n

How to watch the NASCAR Championship race
\nRace: NASCAR Cup Series Championship
\nTrack: Phoenix Raceway, Avondale, Ariz.
\nTime: Sunday, Nov. 2, 3 p.m. ET
\nChannel: NBC and HBO Max<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR fans, start your engines! It\u2019s championship time! Our Championship 4 \u2014 Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin, William Byron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82,6452],"class_list":["post-261078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-sports-betting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}