The key moment in Chase Elliott’s 2020 championship run came at Martinsville Speedway, where he led 236 laps to win on the short track and seize control of a title race he would ultimately claim the following week. Now, back at the historic Virginia layout in the penultimate race of the season, the NASCAR odds favorite Elliott will try to do the same thing again.

And indeed, Elliott is historically strong at Martinsville, where he’s recorded top-10 finishes in eight of his past 11 starts and has led 710 laps over his last four races. But the Hendrick driver also limps into southwest Virginia on the heels of his worst stretch of the NASCAR playoffs, three weeks over which his best finish has been 14th. Trends become more entrenched the later the season goes, and by extension it becomes more difficult to expect a struggling driver to simply flip the switch.

That’s one flaw in the tendency bookmakers have of setting NASCAR betting odds favorites based largely on previous track history, at the expense of current overall performance. We saw that last week at Homestead, when Tyler Reddick—the sportsbooks odds favorite based on just two career starts on the South Florida oval—crashed 25 laps from the finish. With the championship finish line in sight, bettors are better off taking in the full picture rather than relying on a single snapshot.

2022 Xfinity 500 Odds

Odds via DraftKings and current as of publication. Check out our DraftKings sportsbook review.

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2022 Xfinity 500 Expert Picks

Best Bet: Ross Chastain to Win

Odds: +1200 at BetMGM

We’ve been waiting on the Trackhouse driver to rediscover the form that produced two early-season victories. He’s done just that over the second half of this playoff, where back-to-back runner-ups at Las Vegas and Homestead gave him top-four finishes in three consecutive oval-track starts. Chastain also clearly found something in the spring race at Martinsville, where he won the pole and finished fifth.

Best Bet: Denny Hamlin Top 3

Odds: +220 at BetMGM

The pressure is on Hamlin, who was unable to capitalize on one of his best tracks last week at Homestead, and now heads to Martinsville with his title hopes on the line. His two most recent starts at Martinsville, though, simply don’t reflect how historically good he’s been there, and his playoff results—an average finish of 6.6—have been consistently fantastic even though he hasn’t won since the spring.

Best Bet: Joey Logano Top Ford

Odds: +260 at BetMGM

While an 18th-place finish at Homestead marked a step back for Logano, the championship leader has the security of knowing he’s punched his ticket into the championship round at Phoenix. He’ll try to build off a second-place result at Martinsville in the spring when he notched his sixth consecutive top-10 finish at the Virginia short track.

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2022 Xfinity 500 Betting Tips

All that said, Elliott is very capable of winning Sunday at Martinsville, a track where he led 185 laps and finished 10th in the spring—the first race there with this new field-leveling next-gen car. The winner that April day was William Byron, who continues to hang around in this championship race even though he hasn’t won since. With a worst finish of 16th, Byron has also managed to avoid the calamities that have knocked other drivers out.

Denny Hamlin leads all active drivers with five Martinsville victories, although the most recent was in 2010, and the Joe Gibbs mainstay has been 24th and 28th in his last two Martinsville starts. But Hamlin does continue to run very well overall, with his seventh-place finish at Homestead representing his seventh top-10 result in eight playoff starts. Five points on the wrong side of the cutoff line, Hamlin needs a victory to ensure he’ll be racing for the championship next week.

Championship leader Joey Logano was the runner-up to Byron in the spring Martinsville race, part of an outstanding stretch of 10 top-10s in his last 12 starts there. Martin Truex Jr. owns three career Martinsville victories, the most recent in 2021, and has been very competitive in the playoff despite not qualifying for it. And though he’s still winless this season, Ryan Blaney has twice been runner-up at Martinsville, where he’s been top-five in six of his last nine starts.

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2022 Xfinity 500 Time, Date and TV

When: Sunday, 2 p.m.

Where: Martinsville (Va.) Speedway

TV: NBC