With seven wins and 11 podiums in 15 races this year, Max Verstappen is heavily favored at PointsBet Sportsbook to win the F1 Turkish GP on October 10 in Istanbul, Turkey. Last year, Verstappen finished sixth in this race after starting on the outside of the front row.
Of the four races in which Verstappen has not finished on the podium in 2021, three were DNFs after he suffered crash damage. In what has become a hotly contested battle for the Drivers Championship, Verstappen is just two points behind Lewis Hamilton. Last week might have been disastrous for the Belgian driver after he was forced to start last in the field with an engine change, but he managed to keep the gap close by finishing second to Hamilton in the Russian GP.
With odds of -125, the only way to profitably wager on Verstappen is to find someone willing to take the opposite bet.
Last week’s winner and the current championship leader, Hamilton also faces short odds of +150. His Russian GP victory was the fifth of the season and the seventh time in the last nine races that he finished on the podium. Hamilton won last year’s Turkish GP, which was the first in the country since 2011. Hamilton was also victorious there in 2010.
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 this week for Hamilton is $1.50. For bettors more comfortable with fractional odds, a bet of +300 is the same as 3/1.
No other driver in the field has odds better than 15/1.
Ranked third this week, Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas has a line of +1800. Bottas will be leaving Mercedes at the end of the year to join Alfa Romeo. He has not yet won in 2021 with a best of second in the Austrian GP, but he has seven top-five finishes in the last nine events.
Sergio Perez is ranked fourth with odds of +2000. He began the season with a lot of momentum and eight results of sixth or better in the first nine races. In the last six races, he’s earned only one result that strong.
Lando Norris is listed at +2800 for the Turkish GP. He had nine top-fives in the first 10 races of the season, and like Perez his recent results have taken an overall turn for the worse. The highlight of his season to date came as a second-place finish to Daniel Ricciardo in the Italian GP, a race where both Verstappen and Hamilton were eliminated from contention by an accident involving the two points’ leaders.
This week, Ricciardo faces very long odds of +7000. He finished fourth in the most recent F1 race in Russia, however, and has back to back top-fives. to his credit.
After finishing eight last week in his return from COVID-19 protocols, Kimi Raikkonen remains a longshot. He is one of seven drivers in the 20-car field listed with odds of +50000.
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