Internet gambling companies are ready for the Indy 500 on Sunday with odds on the board. Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon are the online gambling favorites in the 33-car field.
Internet gambling companies don’t get a huge amount of action on IndyCar races but they do get increased action on the Indy 500. Castroneves is the favorite since he is starting from the pole. Castroneves has won the Indy 500 three times in the past. 24 of the 33 starting positions were set on Saturday while the other nine spots were set this past Sunday. One driver who just got into the field was Tony Kanaan who crashed twice over the weekend.
He got the next to last spot in the field. It is the first time in his career he has ever qualified outside of the top six. He won the pole for the 2005 race. None of the Andretti drivers have done anything recently and they are struggled in qualifying. Marco Andretti qualified 16th, Ryan Hunter-Reay took 17th, Danica Patrick 23rd and John Andretti was 28th.
Castroneves will start from the pole with Will Power in the middle of the first row and Dario Franchitti on the outside. Ryan Briscoe will start on the inside of row two and will be flanked by Alex Tagliani and Scott Dixon. Graham Rahal will start 7th with Ed Carpenter and Hideki Mutoh on his outside. Row four has Townsend Bell, Justin Wilson and Raphael Matos. Row five has Mario Moraes, Davey Hamilton and Mike Conway.
Row six begins with Marco Andretti with Ryan Hunter-Reay and Dan Wheldon on his outside. Row seven has E.J. Viso, Tomas Scheckter and Ana Beatriz. Row nine has Simona De Silvestro, Danica Patrick and Bertand Baguette. Row ten has Bruno Junqueira, Alex Loyd and Mario Romancini. Row eleven has John Andretti, Sarah Fisher and Vitor Meira. Row twelve has Takuma Sato, Tony Kanaan and Sebastian Saavedra.
Castroneves is a slight favorite in online betting odds with Dixon the second choice. Also with single-digit odds are Franchitti, Briscoe and Power. The only other driver getting much action is Tagliani who is listed at 11-1 on the odds board. None of the other drivers have much of a chance and some should really be listed at 100-1 or more including Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti but both are big names and have much shorter odds than they should.