Pearce Dietrich gives his top NASCAR bets on DraftKings Sportsbook for the NASCAR Cup Series Straight Talk Wireless 500 at Phoenix Raceway.<\/p>\n
NASCAR\u2019s annual West Coast tour hits the desert this weekend. Phoenix isn\u2019t a traditional oval. It\u2019s flat, short, but not that short, and it\u2019s not really an oval. Nonetheless, the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series begins in earnest on Sunday with the series returning to traditional racing at a traditional track.<\/p>\n
For DraftKings Sportsbook NASCAR Picks from the lower series, follow @Race4thePrize<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n Race Winner \u2014 Straight Talk Wireless 500<\/p>\n Ryan Blaney (+285)<\/a><\/p>\n Five top-two finishes in his last seven Phoenix races. Two wins. A 5.4 average running position across seven starts here. A 0.9523 POMS. A long-run rating of 1.3 \u2014 meaning he\u2019s almost always running inside the top two on old tires. This isn\u2019t a trend. It\u2019s ownership. Kevin Harvick told you before the Saturday practice session started: Blaney is the favorite. Then the data backed it up. His practice composite ranked 16th, which doesn\u2019t jump off the page until you realize his car ran 38 laps \u2014 the most of anyone in the field \u2014 with a clean average of 28.135 and a long-run average of 28.167. That gap between clean and long-run is 0.032 seconds. For context, the next-closest among contenders was Joey Logano at 0.110. Blaney\u2019s car doesn\u2019t fall off. It stabilizes.<\/p>\n The broadcast told the rest of the story. Harvick said Penske cars keep the balance of the car better throughout the whole run, and that Blaney\u2019s car stays lower at the end of the first third of the corner \u2014 which keeps him lower through the center, which lets him get to partial throttle earlier, which keeps mid-corner speed up. Chase Elliott\u2019s crew was raving about Blaney\u2019s rotation last week at COTA. This week, Clint Bowyer said Blaney drives a looser race car than anyone, which makes him versatile in traffic \u2014 and at Phoenix, you will get stuck in traffic. The man won here in November. He\u2019s +285. That\u2019s not value, that\u2019s a fair price for the best Phoenix driver in the Cup Series.\u00a0<\/p>\n