what is the NASCAR season?

[pico]

when does it start, when does it end?

[SlickFazzer]

Feb. 15th, Daytona 500 i believe.

[pico]

daytona 500 is like the opening ceremony. which race is the closing ceremony?

[SlickFazzer]

Where are the SBR nascar experts when you need them.....

[RogueScholar]

There was a schedule realignment for '09, season kicks off with the Daytona Budweiser Shootout on February 7th. The Chase starts September 20th, and concludes at Homestead on the 22nd of November. They added a fourth bye week, that's why the dates are more spread out than last year.

[onthewhat]

The season ended a few weeks ago. They basically get only December and January off. Long season.

[RogueScholar]

Pico, that final race at Homestead is the Ford 400, it always wraps up the NASCAR season because they bank on Miami having the best odds of good weather for a race held so late in the year.

[pico]

so you guys making money in nascar? seems sort like betting ponies.

[RogueScholar]

I make money betting NASCAR, I lose money on the ponies, and the greyhounds when I lived in Portland. NASCAR can be handicapped adequately, but you have to be comfortable with playing a fairly full card each race, because wreck and car troubles can easily blow away all your careful analysis.

[pico]

I make money betting NASCAR, I lose money on the ponies, and the greyhounds when I lived in Portland. NASCAR can be handicapped adequately, but you have to be comfortable with playing a fairly full card each race, because wreck and car troubles can easily blow away all your careful analysis.

so you bet top 5 and hope one of them will win?

[onthewhat]

pico...you might wanna play driver matchups...rather than bet guys to win race

[RogueScholar]

No, I'll bet only one, sometimes two drivers to win, about 6 head-to-head driver matchups, and usually two over/unders on single drivers. Because they're not all equal stake size, it's not uncommon for me to go 5-5 and still be generating profit. It's all a matter of learning which drivers perform consistently at each track (even tracks of identical size have different pavement characteristics, different banking in the corners, different pit road configurations, and races run at different times of the day when the track is hot or cold) and learning which drivers perform well from different starting positions and can gain ground late in a run. Once you spend a whole season figuring that out, you're just watching the three or four new drivers to add to your understanding.