NASCAR Best Bets This Week: Eero 400 Betting Picks
Updated 09 Jul, 2026
This week, the NASCAR Cup Series is in Illinois for the 2026 running of the Eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. We are starting to see some separation at the top of the Cup Series standings, as the top names in the sport have created some distance from their competition. This week, the leader in the season-long standings is also the favorite to get the win in this race. Continue reading to get our thoughts on this race and who we think will come out of it claiming the checkered flag in our NASCAR best bets for the weekend.
Our best bet for this week's Eero 400 from Chicagoland is for Denny Hamlin to get the win at +320. Hamlin has reached the top of the NASCAR Cup Series standings, overtaking Tyler Reddick after Reddick's red-hot start to the 2026 campaign. Hamlin has led the most laps in the Cup Series by a wide margin this year and appears to be driving better than anyone right now. Now that we are back to a more traditional track setup after last week's road course race, Hamlin is the best play to win again on Sunday.
NASCAR continues to attract more attention from bettors as sportsbooks expand their offerings, and we're here to guide you through every twist and turn. Our expert NASCAR picks, led by Jay Sanin, provide you with strategic advice on the top bets each week, whether it’s the favorite to win, undervalued contenders, or hidden dark horses.
With a focus on the latest race data and trends, we ensure that our analysis is grounded in experience and authority, giving you the confidence to make informed bets. Trust our expertise to help you be a better motorsports bettor and increase your chances of making profitable wagers throughout the NASCAR season.
Throughout this NASCAR season, we will look at several betting markets before delivering our NASCAR best bets. We will evaluate everything from standard race winner odds to more in-depth betting markets. Below are the main betting markets we will break down ahead of each week on the NASCAR schedule.
The most popular betting market in NASCAR is the race-winner market. Not only is this the easiest betting option to understand, as the goal of every driver is to simply win each race. But it is also the most potentially lucrative market, as all drivers come into each race at plus prices to finish in first place.
Along with race-winner markets, we also tend to focus heavily on markets pertaining to top-5, top-10, and other top-finisher bets. With these bets, the potential payouts are not quite as enticing as bets on who will win each race. But those odds have to be balanced against the increased likelihood of a driver finishing in the top-5 or top-10 rather than that driver needing to win the race outright.
Sportsbooks will also pair up drivers and pit them against each other, offering odds on which driver will have the better finishing position between them. With these head-to-head markets, bettors have to think long and hard about how not just these drivers will perform, but how the rest of the field could impact them.
In a similar vein to the head-to-head betting markets mentioned above, sportsbooks will also put drivers into groups of three-to-five drivers and ask bettors to pick which driver will have the best finish among them. Handicapping each race in the group setting can be a lot of fun, with payouts that could be better than two-driver head-to-head markets.
There are, of course, many other betting options that sportsbooks will post before every NASCAR race. Should we determine that those other options are worth pursuing, you will see them as a part of our picks for each race. We encourage bettors to explore all of the options available to them in order to find the options that are of the most interest to you.
From a strategic standpoint, NASCAR betting has the potential to be a lot different than betting on other sports. A few of the unique handicapping aspects of the sport are listed below, as we not only hope to pick winners each week in NASCAR, but help you become a smarter NASCAR bettor as well.
From a strategy standpoint, it is very important to look at the history of each driver on each track throughout the NASCAR season. Every track is different in the NASCAR Cup Series, from lap distances to the surface makeup of the tracks themselves. Bettors will not just want to look at who has won in past events at each track, but at which drivers have been better or worse at each stop on the NASCAR schedule to get a full picture of who the top contenders are each week.
While each NASCAR driver is competing in each car individually each week, it is also important to remember that this is a team sport. Different race teams oversee several drivers, as those drivers have the ability to work together within the chaos that is each race. While this may not impact the outcome of each race, it is worth keeping in mind as the season wears on that there may be some cooperation between specific drivers.
It cannot be overstated how important it is to shop for the best odds when betting on NASCAR. This is especially true for picking outright winners, as there can be major differences between sportsbooks as far as the odds are concerned for each driver. Putting in a little bit of time to find those differences and to bet at the most favorable price can have a huge impact on profitability over the course of the NASCAR season.
Along with our best NASCAR bets this week and each week during the season, our expert handicappers at ATS.io have picks available for all of the major sports, and even some off the beaten path. Just click the links below for our best bets in many sports, available every day and every week.
Jay Sanin is the GM and Head of Sports at ATS.io. He has been writing about sports gambling since 2013, handicapping tens of thousands of sporting events. He plays sides and totals aggressively across most sports and is more selective in player prop markets. He does his own modeling across most sports, and his family is jealous of how much time he spends on his precious spreadsheets.
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