With two NTT IndyCar Series road course wins to his credit in 2021, Alex Palou is the early PointsBet Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix favorite at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course. The race will be run on Saturday, August 14 (12:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN) as part of a triple-header weekend at IMS along with the NASCAR Xfinity and Cup races.
Palou opened on Friday with odds of +500. In addition to his pair of wins, at Barber Motorsports Park and Road America, Palou has three third-place finishes, giving him five podiums in eight road races. Last week he was seventh on the challenging Streets of Nashville.
One way to view American Odds is to move the decimal point two positions to the left. That will let a bettor know what they will make on a $1 bet, so the return on investment for this week for Palou is $5.00. For bettors more comfortable with fractional odds, a bet of +300 is the same as 3/1.
Josef Newgarden is ranked second with odds of +650. Fresh off his Mid-Ohio win, Newgarden was the favorite on his hometown track in Tennessee with a +380. That race proved to be a disruptor as several drivers with low odds finished mid-pack. Newgarden was just inside the top 10 in that race. He hopes to rebound on a track where he won once in three 2020 starts.
Two drivers are ranked third with a line of +700.
Pato O’Ward is one of the third-ranked drivers despite the fact that he has not finished better than eighth in his last three starts on road and street circuits. He swept the top five at Belle Isle, however, and secured the win in the second race of that double header.
Rinus VeeKay is the other driver listed at 7/1. He is coming off a 24th-place finish in Nashville and has not cracked the top 15 in his last three road course starts.
Scott Dixon rounds out the top five this week with odds of +750. While he has not yet visited Victory Lane on a road course in 2021, Dixon has been perfect in regard to top-10s. Five of his efforts on this track type ended in top-five finishes, including last week’s second-place effort at Nashville. Dixon won the first of three races held on the Indy road course last year after starting seventh.
No other driver has better than 10/1 odds.
Marcus Ericsson won last week’s Nashville race in dramatic fashion after his car launched into the air in an early incident. He finished second at Mid-Ohio and won at Belle Isle. Despite those strong runs, he is listed this week with +2000 odds and should be considered one of the top dark horse contenders.
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