10 NASCAR Drivers With The Best Odds To Win A Championship At The Halfway Point Of The 2025 Season

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is officially halfway complete, and favorites have begun to emerge for the series championship. While there are still plenty of twists and turns, literally, we’re counting down the top 10 favorites to lift the championship trophy in Phoenix.

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season hit the halfway point with Chase Elliott picking up his first win of the season in Atlanta. At the same point last season, eventual series champion Joey Logano had zero wins to his name.

Which is to say, a lot can change in the second half of the season. But for now, we’re counting down the drivers with the 10 best odds to be crowned the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series champion in November at Phoenix Raceway.

10) Ross Chastain - +2200

DraftKings lists Ross Chastain, who picked up a win in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, as the 10th favorite to win a championship.

Chastain has been one of the drivers of the season for TrackHouse Racing, which has struggled as a whole for the most part. Those struggles to find speed are what keep Chastain from being higher on this list.

But as we’ve seen the past, a lot can change if a driver gets hot come playoff time.

9) Chase Briscoe - +2000

Chase Briscoe has really hit his stride in recent weeks during his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing.

The former Stewart-Haas Racing driver showed speed with consecutive poles at Charlotte, Nashville, and Michigan. He then picked up his first win for the team at Pocono and has already recorded eight top-10 finishes this season, tying his career-high.

While Briscoe would be perhaps the biggest surprise on this list to win it all, even over Chastain, it’s clear he’s ready to prove a point now that he’s in top-tier equipment.

T7) Tyler Reddick - +1200

Prior to the season, Reddick was far higher on this list. After all, he qualified for the championship four last season, and is widely regarded as one of the series’ top drivers.

But 2025 has proven to be a bit of an uphill battle for Reddick. He still hasn’t won a race yet this season, and prior to last week’s fourth-place finish at Atlanta, he’d gone nearly three months without a top-five.

Still, Reddick is supremely talented and nobody would be surprised if the flood gates opened at some point in the back half of the season.

T7) Joey Logano - +1200

If you’re a believer in Joey Logano’s even-year magic (all three of his Cup Series championships have come in an even year), then you might want to stay away from this bet.

But if you’re not, you know that there are few combinations as dangerous as Joey Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe when it comes to the playoffs.

Logano is already a step ahead of where he was last season, having picked up a win at Texas, and his Penske team looks faster as a whole that it did in the leadup to last season’s playoffs when, of course, Logano came from seemingly out of nowhere to win a championship.

6) Chase Elliott - +900

Chase Elliott might just represent the best value bet on this list at this point in time. The 2020 series champion is coming off his first win of the season and has moved into second in the regular-season standings.

It also wouldn’t surprise anyone if Elliott, one of the series’ better road races, won again this weekend in Chicago after a third-place finish earlier this season in Mexico City.

If he does, you can bet that Elliott’s championship odds will be much shorter than +900 come Monday morning.

5) William Byron - +700

While Elliott is moving up this list, teammate William Byron seems to be moving down and, honestly, might be a decent buy-low candidate.

Byron, who still leads the regular season points, was dominant earlier in the year but could only convert his elite speed into one race win.

In recent weeks, he’s struggled a bit more to stay at the front of the pack, and Elliott and others have cut into his points lead. Still, Byron has made the final four in each of the previous two seasons, and odds say that if you continue to do so, one of these years you’ll walk away as a NASCAR Cup Series champion.

4) Denny Hamlin - +600

Surely, this has to be the year for 44-year-old Denny Hamlin to claim his first series championship, right?

With 57 career wins and three Daytona 500 victories, Hamlin has already cemented his future in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. But a Cup Series crown is the one glaring hole on his resume.

Had that not been the case, his odds would likely be even lower than they are now. Hamlin already has three wins this season and sits atop the most recent edition of our series power rankings.

But until Hamlin gets over the hump, it appears that fans and bettors will remain a tad skeptical about his ability to do so.

3) Ryan Blaney - +550

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Ryan Blaney, who has shown incredible speed this season but picked up just one victory.

Still, nobody needs to be reminded how much of a threat the 2023 Cup Series champion is come playoff time. Team Penske has one the last three series titles in a row, with Logano winning in 2022 and 2024 and Blaney splitting the middle. Blaney also finished as the runner-up to Logano a year ago.

This year, Blaney has done a better job of positioning himself early in the season so that the playoffs aren’t as much of an uphill battle. Will that early-season speed carry the entire way through? Only time will tell.

2) Christopher Bell - +500

When Bell won three of the first four races of the 2025 season, it looked like he might be putting together one of the all-time great seasons in NASCAR Cup Series history.

He’s since cooled off a good bit, but he remains right in the hunt for the regular season title, and has banked the third-most playoff points behind Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin.

Bell has experience in the final four as well, having made it in both 2022 and 2023, but those experiences didn’t go so well as he finished third and fourth, respectively.

Maybe 2025 is the year that we see Bell, who many consider the present and future of Joe Gibbs Racing, break through and win his first Cup Series championship.

1) Kyle Larson - +330

Is it any surprise to see Kyle Larson top this list? After all, he leads the series, along with Bell and Hamlin, with three wins this season. His 23 playoff points are the most of any driver in the Series, and his 26 wins this decade are the most in the series by far despite missing much of the 2020 season.

Larson, the 2021 series champion, is an immense talent. But the current NASCAR playoff format has not always been good to him, as he missed out of the final four entirely in both 2022 and 2024, while Blaney took the 2023 championship ahead of him.

Larson is undeniably a threat, perhaps even the largest threat, to win it all in 2025. But the other drivers on this list, and perhaps ones who aren’t, won’t make it easy for him.