GEICO 500 Picks and NASCAR Preview: Favorites, Values, and Longshots

Geico 500 picks for the 2022 NASCAR season. Outright picks for a big payout! SBR - trusted for over 20 years.

Last Updated: April 22, 2022 2:51 AM EDT • 4 minute read

It’s time to open things back up as NASCAR leaves the short tracks and takes on Talladega Superspeedway. See who we are backing for the GEICO 500 with our top NASCAR picks.

After three weeks of increasingly smaller tracks, drivers get to stretch their legs again on the 2.66-mile, high-banked, high-intensity, Talladega Superspeedway. Cars and their pilots will be tested for 188 laps of close-quarter, pack-style racing with plenty of bump drafting and tempers flaring. All the while, trying to avoid “the big one."

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Brad Keselowski took home the checkered flag from the 2021 spring race here. Bubba Wallace made the call to stay on the track which led to a win in the rain-shortened fall race. Ryan Blaney comes in as the consensus favorite to win in 2022.

After that, we are treated to typical superspeedway handicapping with drivers all over the spectrum across the books.

Here are my outright picks for NASCAR’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, AL (odds via FanDuel Sportsbook, Caesars Sportsbook, and DraftKings Sportsbook).

GEICO 500 Odds

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GEICO 500 Odds Analysis

As the favorite, Blaney holds steady on most books. Once you get past him, things get chaotic which mimics the characteristics of the race these lines represent. It’s difficult to predict a winner of a race that will see somewhere around 35 lead changes and 9,000 green flag passes.

Even Wallace, who last won here, is inconsistent in his listings. Wallace is +1200 on BetMGM, but +1400 on DraftKings. Line shopping becomes imperative given the unpredictable nature of a superspeedway race.

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GEICO 500 Picks

Ryan Blaney (+1000 via FanDuel)Ross Chastain (+3500 via Caesars)Daniel Suarez (+6000 via DraftKings)

Check out our top-rated sportsbooks here

GEICO 500 Predictions

Blaney (+1000)

All of our most trusted books are in agreement here that Blaney is a favorite to win this race. He is fairly consistent around this listed price and can be found at +1000 to repeat his 2020 spring win at this track.

The 2020 GEICO 500 was the second of back-to-back victories at Talladega for the No. 12 car. Blaney also claimed the win in the fall 2019 running here. Blaney led the most laps in both of those races, which is a hard task at a superspeedway race.

It has been a solid stretch for the Penske Ford over the last four races. Blaney has secured four straight top-10 finishes with two straight top-five outings at Bristol and Martinsville. He started the season with a fourth-place run at Daytona.

Chastain (+3500)

Track history is not in favor of Ross Chastain here. So, this bet is driven almost purely on his recent successes. His No. 1 car has the most top-five finishes of the field. These finishes include his first career cup win in Austin. He enters this week eighth in the season standings.

Unfortunately, Chastain was able to run only 62 laps at Daytona before getting caught up in a wreck. That said, he did manage a second-place finish in Atlanta, which by all right and accounts is now a superspeedway. Also encouraging are his 2020 Xfinity appearances at Talladega in which he finished in second and sixth.

DraftKings is offering odds of +2500 for Chastain to win, with FanDuel listing him at +2400. BetMGM and WynnBET have him at +2800, so head to Caesars for the best price.

Suarez (+6000)

It almost seemed as if the No. 99 car was on its way to a muddy victory lane last week at Bristol. Daniel Suarez and his team elected to stay out after an early caution and gambled on the race being called due to weather. For 64 laps, he held the lead waiting for the call to come. It never did. After it was all said and done, he had to settle for a 12th-place finish.

Overall this season, Suarez has run inside the top five in all but three of the nine races. He’s been as high as first in each of them, and he has had two fourth-place finishes. One of those came at Atlanta where he came on late to lead 13 laps.

It seems no one is sure how to handicap Suarez. While he’s +6000 at DraftKings, FanDuel has him at +3600. Even still, BetMGM and Caesars have him at +5000.

Where to Bet on the GEICO 500

Here are our top-rated sportsbooks:

FanDuel Sportsbook Caesars Sportsbook DraftKings Sportsbook PointsBet BetMGM

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GEICO 500 picks made 4/22/2022 at 2:08 a.m. ET

Written by:
Rodrigo Villagomez

Rod has been a contributing author at Sportsbook Review for the last two years specializing in NASCAR and NFL prop betting. He has been writing and podcasting professionally for almost 20 years, spending the last four years in the sports gambling space. Rod has made several appearances on the SiriusXM Fantasy Sports channel. He’s appeared multiple times on the Fantasy Alarm Show with Howard Bender as well as several times over the last two years during the FSGA Draft Week. He is a published author in the academic world with an article on steroids in baseball featured in the Bedford Reader textbook. Rod loves to find non-traditional bets which has led him to dive into the world of defensive and kicking props in football among others. His love of motorsports has translated into several winning weeks of both NASCAR and Formula 1 bets. Rod is a fan first and aims to provide betting picks that are not only profitable but will provide the maximum entertainment value during the sweat. Ultimately, he tries to remember that watching sports should still be fun and anything else is icing on the cake.