Daytona 500 odds: Breaking down opening lines for Bluegreen Vacation Duels races

Before the drivers can start their engines at the Daytona 500 on Sunday, they’ll have to go through some unique qualifying protocols to determine where they’ll line up once the green flag waves.

Instead of the standard qualifying times determining who will start where in the field, the Daytona 500 does it a bit differently. They put on two separate races on Thursday, the Bluegreen Vacation Duels, which sets the starting lineup for the Great American Race.

The standard qualifying times will set the starting spots for the two Duel races. Odd number finishers after the qualifying times will race in the first Duel, even number finishers will race in the second. At the Daytona 500, the Duel 1 finishers will get the inside lane while Duel 2 finishers will get the outside.

But the first row will be determined strictly by time qualifying, which will have the Top 10 after a first lap run again. The best two of those 10 will be the front row, while the other eight will run a Duel for their track position.

Since the fun on the race track gets going a bit earlier this week, that means the fun in the DraftKings app gets going a bit earlier too. People can place bets on who they think will be the winners from each Duel. The current favorite is the field (+100), because of how tough this would be to predict. The best odds on a non-field bet would be Denny Hamlin winning Duel 1 and Chase Elliott winning Duel 2 (+2800). The longest shot going off is the pair of Austin Cindric and Ricky Stenhouse Jr winning the Duels (+8000), so that could earn bettors a pretty nice chunk of change.

Here are all the odds for potential results atop the twin Duels. all the drivers competing.

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