Staturdays

Kyle Bennison

  • IndyCar Poised for A Breakthrough Season

    IndyCar Poised for A Breakthrough Season

    When F1 defiantly denied Andretti’s bid to enter the series, it rubbed a lot of open-wheel race fans the wrong way, not only in the US but abroad.

    Then, F1’s season-opener in Bahrain put fans to sleep, with only 10-cars finishing on the lead lap, Verstappen finishing 22 seconds ahead of the field (or rather his teammate; the field was 25 seconds behind), and no cars within one second of each other at the line.

    Now, Red Bull’s Christian Horner is embroiled in scandal, and the FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is under investigation for tampering with a stewards’ decision last season. While some people may love the off-track drama, others may be tired of the “circus” that is F1, where more action occurs off the track than on it.

    Luckily for fans, Indycar awaits just around the corner this weekend. Race fans eager for some on-track action as well as uncertainty in the outcome should be chomping at the bit to tune in.

    Competitiveness and Driver Appeal

    The health of the IndyCar series is as good as ever. There were 10 different pole-winners and 7 race-winners in 2023, plus 16 different podium finishers. Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden took the major share of wins, but the series is also full of exciting young talents—Pato O’Ward, Scott McLaughlin, Colton Herta, and Kyle Kirkwood to name a few—and legendary veterans like Scott Dixon and Will Power that are still competing for both wins and championships. The series also brings the legitimacy of F1 in guys like Romain Grosjean and Marcus Ericsson with their experience in both series.

    The series strikes the right balance of international representation from Mexico to New Zealand to Sweden while still showcasing plenty of young American racing talents.

    Sustainability Focus

    They introduced the sustainably sourced “guayule” green-walled Firestone tires to the series, which just bolsters their sustainability efforts that took a huge leap forward with the biofuel they too quietly used to power the cars in 2023. Now in 2024, they’ll introduce the hybrid assist unit, which will come into play after the Indy 500 and also bring about more power for the drivers to pass with when deployed.

    Media Exposure

    To top it all off, IndyCar is more present on television than ever before. In 2023, NBC broadcast 15 races on NBC, 3 on USA network, and 1 race exclusively on Peacock. 100 Days To Indy aired on the CW, and returns for season 2 this spring, giving fans that behind-the-curtain look at the drivers and their lives that sports and reality TV fans alike are expecting these days. NBC has done a great job giving fans access to other sessions as well directly on Peacock and having the A-Team cover it, and they’ve been responsive to problems and suggestions from fans throughout the season, with Townsend Bell often going to Twitter and asking fans directly for feedback on the broadcast on the plane ride home after the race.

    There will be 12 NBC races this year, 6 USA races, and 2 Peacock races this season. With Peacock seeing subscriber growth from the NFL playoff game this year, and people being more accustomed to watching TV across multiple apps generally, we’ll see if Peacock becomes less of a friction point for fans.

    St. Pete Outlook

    St. Pete should be entertaining for fans, with opportunities for anyone in at least the top 10 to win. The average winner started 6th, and there were 7 lead changes on average per race.

    As with any street course, there’s also the chance for fireworks, with an average of 3.5 cautions for 16 laps.

    In the past 10 years, qualifying on pole only give you a slight edge, with two of the past ten winners coming from the pole position.

    With F1 fumbling their new Netflix-generated audience with every misstep they make, Indycar is poised to capture some of those fans that want the excitement of open-wheel racing that F1 has failed to deliver on.

    Qualifying starts at 2PM eastern on March 9th on Peacock, and the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg kicks off the IndyCar season on NBC at 12 PM eastern on March 10th.

  • Pebble Beach Weather Leads to Favorable Odds

    Pebble Beach Weather Leads to Favorable Odds

    I just recently started following the PGA Tour, and even more recently started dabbling in betting on golf.

    Thankfully, there’s a site called datagolf.com—probably one of the greatest sports statistics and betting sites I’ve come across—which makes it very accessible to get started. They offer live finishing odds for every player in every tournament. For paid subscribers, they even offer betting tools and expected values for various bets using live odds from popular sportsbooks. This makes it really easy to evaluate bets in realtime. (The PGA Tour site, on the other hand, is one of the worst and most poorly-organized sites for stat nerds I’ve ever used.)

    The bet I was following on Saturday was the leader Wyndham Clark’s odds of winning. He had a two-stroke lead on the field, which by the end of the round was down to one stroke to second and two-strokes to third.

    My philosophy so far has been to put more trust in the players who have been there before as opposed to the newcomers. Whether this is valid or not is to be determined. And Clark, just this past season, had won his first two pro tournaments. Second place Ludvig Åberg had four wins, but just one on the PGA tour, and third place Matthieu Pavon had just one win as well. Further bolstering my confidence was the fact the Clark was playing great golf, posting a 60 in the third round. Perhaps I was falling into the hot-hand fallacy, if that exists in golf.

    At the end of the third round, datagolf had Clark’s odds around 29% to win. DraftKings was offering him to win at +200 (33% implied probability). This initally looked like a negative expected value (EV) bet.

    Now, my impression of his play that day, his previous experience, and who he was up against bolstered my internal odds to about 33%. But there was one element that was not factored into either of these odds yet: the elements.

    The weather forecast for Sunday was dire, with heavy storms throughout the day not expected to let up until the late afternoon. There was a chance they would postpone until Monday, but there was also the chance that the tournament would be suspended entirely. It seemed almost certain that they wouldn’t play on Sunday, but whether or not they would cancel I had no way to know. However, I knew it was at least a possibility, meaning I should bump my internal odds up higher still, turning this into a positive EV bet.

    If there was a 33% chance of Clark winning if they played, and a 100% chance of him winning if they cancelled, and a 25% chance that they cancelled, then his win probability should really have been around 50%! This turns into a high EV bet. It appeared that DraftKings, and possibly other sports books, didn’t account for weather and early cancellations in their odds models.

    A probability tree of the possible outcomes for Clark if they played or if they cancelled the final round.

    Even if you disagree with my upping the initial odds from 29%, as long as you agree with at least a four percent chance of cancellation given the weather forecast, that puts positive EV on the +200 odds.

    At 33% implied odds and 50% actual odds on the current leader, DraftKings was essentially offering people free money.

    It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on weather-affected tournaments in the future to see if they’ve learned anything from this situation.

  • Unhappy in Happy Valley

    Unhappy in Happy Valley

    Fans and reporters were not pleased after PSU’s loss to Michigan.

    After Penn State fell to Michigan 24-15 last Saturday, a reporter questioned James Franklin on his two-point conversion attempt in a now-viral video.

    The situation was this: Penn State just scored a touchdown and was down 9, with 1:59 remaining in the game. They opted to go for it, lined up in what we can all agree was a questionable formation, and the attempt failed.

    The counter-argument to the go-for-two decision boiled down to this:

    “If you kick the extra point, you’re down 8 and your team is still in it. Down 9 with 1:59 left, you’re done.”

    So there are a few issues with this argument:

    1. The assumption that the game is over down 9 with 1:59 left is wrong. There’s about a 1% chance that you can win (based on NFL data) in that situation. If PSU held Michigan to a three-and-out on the next drive, they could have gotten the ball back with about a minute left.
    2. If you’re down 8 (and you score again), you still need to go for two. So unless you think your team will magically be better at 2-point conversions next time, there’s no difference. (Penn State is 0-3 on the year, two of them in that game.)
    3. Whether you know you’ve lost the game with 1:59 on the clock or 0:00s on the clock makes no difference.

    Okay, so what does the math say?

    It turns out, there may be no difference, which is kind of what I was getting at up above. It doesn’t matter. Fans very passionately want to feel like they’re in it to the last moment. Coaches prefer to know what their options are ahead of time. Do I need an onside kick? Because if so I’ll do it now rather than later.

    I used Ben Baldwin’s 4th-down-calculator and the 2022 Lions-Packers to simulate this game since the Packers (Michigan) were 4.5-point favorites over the (Detroit, not Nittany) Lions (Penn State).

    On average, whether you make or miss either attempt, you end up with about a 2% win probability. Not great either way. But in the end, it looks like the decision was a toss-up. So the strong anger and one-sided debate are a bit surprising. But I’ll chalk it up to a frustrated fan base.

    What we don’t need to argue about is Franklin’s decision to go for two in the second quarter, down 14-9. Here, there was so much time left that going for two actually hurt their win probability.

    Now, this is contrary to what I just said earlier about knowing what you need ahead of time, so I think this outcome speaks to the cost of leaving free points off the board early.

    On the methodology: If I were more precise, I would pick my teams based on two-point conversion rates, PAT percentages, and two-point conversion defense, but there’s just not enough data to know that when PSU has only attempted three on the year and Michigan has only defended two (4th and short or 4th and goal can sometimes be a proxy for 2PA).