Scott Dixon still Indy 500 PointsBet favorite as odds shift

Scott Dixon opened as the early line favorite at PointsBet Sportsbook to win the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 30, 2021 (11 a.m. ET, NBC), and after winning the pole his betting line lost 220 points.

Dixon’s opening line of +600 made him a slight favorite over Josef Newgarden at +700, but after qualification the gap widened significantly.

With his fourth Indy 500 pole and a 2008 victory to his credit, Dixon’s new line is +380. If he continues to show speed in final practice, that line could move again. In addition to his ’08 win, Dixon finished second last year and has top-fives in three of his last six Indy 500s.

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 Dixon this week is $3.80. For bettors more comfortable with fractional odds, a bet of +300 is the same as 3/1.

His starting position also impacted Newgarden. He opened as the second favorite at +700, but after qualifying 15th he fell to the sixth slot at +1600. Newgarden was the fastest Team Penske driver in time trials as the organization struggled to find a good four-lap speed.

In part because of his second-place qualification effort, Colton Herta became the second favored driver. His current odds are +725.

No other driver is listed at better than 10/1.

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Pato O’Ward opened at +750 and had 250 points added to his line after a 12th-place qualification effort. Last year he finished sixth in the race after starting 15th.

Alexander Rossi is ranked fourth with +1300 odds. Rossi had a four-race, top-10 streak going until last year when he retired on Lap 143 with crash damage.

Alex Palou rounds out the top five at +1400. Palou starts one position better in 2021 than he did last year. After starting seventh, he crashed and retired on Lap 121 in the 104th Indy 500.

Penske teammates Will Power and Simon Pagenaud experienced extreme line movements after their problems in qualification. Both drivers opened at +1000 and has +1500 added their payout to land at +2500. Pagenaud qualified 26th. Dixon starts on the inside of the last row in 32nd.

Both drivers finished outside the top 10 in last year’s edition of this race with Power 14th and Pagenaud two laps off the pace in 22nd.

The final driver on the front row also had points deducted from his line. Rinus Veekay opened at +2500 and is currently available at +1800.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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