NASCAR - Betting the Daytona 500? Here are Mark Eckel’s top picks

NASCAR season opens today (Feb. 17) with the 60th anniversary of the circuit’s biggest race, the Daytona 500.

Daytona, always a tough race to handicap, does have its share of interesting trends to keep in mind before putting in a bet on who you think might cross the finish line first to win the Harley J. Earl Trophy.

Here are a few:

• While Chevrolet leads with 23 all-time Daytona winners, Ford has won five of the past 10. And the Fords looked impressive all week as well, which could mean six of 11.
• The driver in the pole position, this year it’s William Byron, has not won the race since Dale Jarrett did so in 2000. That’s quite a few races ago. For that mater the position of the last 10 winners have been: 14, 8, 11, 5, 9, 9, 4, 32, 13 and 39. That explains the 40-1 odds on Byron and why we’re not betting on him.
• Nine of the last 10 winners have been first-time winners, which is bad news for favorites such as Joey Logano (2015), Denny Hamlin (2016) and Kevin Harvick (2007), but good news for Martin Truex, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, who have yet to hoist the Earl Trophy.
• There has not been a repeat winner since 1994-95 when Sterling Martin went back-to-back (Cale Yarborough also did it 1983-84 and Richard Petty in 1973-74), so bet last year’s winner Austin Dillon, at 30-1, with your money, not mine.

Enough of the history lessons, you want to know Sunday’s winner. With the help of two NASCAR experts Scott “Tobacco Road’’ Baker and Mike “Left Turn’’ Sweeney here’s who we like.

Even though both experts mentioned the co-favorites Logano and Keselowski, at 8-1, I’m not using either one. I’m sticking with the first-time theory to throw out Logano and Keselowski just has problems at Daytona. He has not finished his last four races there.

1 Ryan Blaney (12-1) — I’m going with Logano’s Team Penske teammate.

2 Martin Truex Jr. (18-1) — Those odds are just too good to pass on the Joe Gibbs driver.

3 Kyle Busch (16-1) — It might just be his time.

Longshot play: Paul Menard (35-1).