The 2026 NASCAR season is almost here. It’s less than two weeks before the Clash at Bowman Gray, and less than four weeks until the Daytona 500. All the craziness of the NASCAR offseason is behind us, and the new championship format has been set. Now, books have released win totals for 21 different drivers. Let’s dive in and pick our 2026 NASCAR win total best bets.
NASCAR officially set the championship format last week. Returning to “The Chase” in a modified form. It takes away the “win, and you are in.” However, I don’t think that will affect anyone’s win totals or, for the most part, anyone going all out to win races. Race wins will be worth more points than they were previously.
Race win total bets are currently available on three sports books. Caesars, The Score (formerly ESPNBet), and BET365. All three books have totals listed for the entire season, with all 36-point paying races counting toward the total. Last year, some books were offering just the “regular season,” so check with your book’s rules when you place these races. That being said, let’s see who we are most confident in betting will win, or not win, races in 2026.
2026 NASCAR Win Total Best Bets
Carson Hocevar Over .5 Wins (+100)
I’m kicking this off in style by calling my shot on a young gun who I think takes a big step this year. Carson Hocevar impressed in 2024 as a rookie, grabbing a top five and six top 10 finishes on the year. All while only having two DNF finishes. He increased all of those numbers, snagging two top-five finishes and nine top 10’s in his sophomore season last year. He almost won his first career race at Atlanta; if not for a last-lap caution, he might have found his way into victory lane.
His run at Nashville, where he finished second place to Ryan Blaney, showed just how close he can be to winning a race. He led over 25 laps at tracks like Bristol, Michigan, and Texas. Much like we saw Josh Berry grab a win at Las Vegas last year, that could be Hocevar this year. I have him as my pick to win the Daytona 500, which would be a great way to cash this bet. But even if it’s not there, I think the hot shoe kid gets one in 2026.
Christopher Bell Over 3.5 Wins (+115)
Christopher Bell has transitioned from the guy on the Netflix documentary “Full Speed,” who said “imagine that” when the producer told him they overlooked him, to a full-on weekly threat to win in NASCAR’s Cup Series. Bell picked up three wins in 2024, matching his 2022 total. Last year, he won three races in a row to kick the season off before really cooling down. He only scored one more victory in a quiet second half of the year.
There’s no reason to believe Bell doesn’t return to the early 2025 Bell that we saw pick up wins at three different styles of race tracks. He won at Atlanta a drafting track, Phoenix a short flat, and the road course COTA. That’s the thing about Bell: he can win anywhere, any week. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what Bell is capable of; he’ll return to at least four wins this year.
Austin Cindric Under .5 Wins (-115)
Cindric has won a race in three of his four full-time seasons in the Cup Series. It’s been an impressive start, despite being a little behind where you might expect a full-time Penske car to be. The case for him to win again this year is that he keeps finding a way to do it, and while two of the years were on drafting tracks, he also won a race at Gateway in 2024. However, the case against it, is that you can’t rely on winning at a super speedway every year. And outside of that Gateway win, where he needed trouble from both Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell, he hasn’t consistently competed for wins outside of drafting tracks. I don’t think we’ll see Cindric find victory lane in 2025, and the good news on betting the under, it starts as cashing, and it’s cashing all year unless he finds a win!
Tyler Reddick Over 2.5 Wins (+165)
We are back. Two years ago, I called my shot on Tyler Reddick, and he had his breakout season with 23XI, winning three races and the regular season championship. He also made his first, and what will be his only, Championship 4 appearance, as that system is no longer. It wasn’t the first time Reddick has won three races. He did so in 2022 in the first year of the NextGen car for Richard Childress Racing, when he was looked at as one of the road course specialists.
Last year was rough for Reddick, but with all of the off-track distractions like his race team suing NASCAR, I think we’ll be back to the 2024 version of Tyler Reddick. The fact that this is only 2.5, and we’re getting +165 as the number. We could very quickly, into the season, look back at this number and feel like we really got one over on the books.
