Hornaday Jr. picks up first win of the season at ORP

Autoracing Betting Lines

07/23/2010 - Clermont, IN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Ron Hornaday Jr. snapped a 22-race winless streak in the Camping World Truck Series with an impressive performance in Friday's AAA Insurance 200 at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis.

Hornaday Jr., the four-time and defending series champion, took the lead from pole sitter Timothy Peters after 62 laps and dominated from there. Peters reclaimed the top position during the fifth and final caution when he opted to stay on track, while most of the leaders, including Hornaday, pitted for the last time.

Shortly after the final restart, Hornaday and Kyle Busch chased down Peters. Hornaday then made his winning pass with 48 laps remaining. He finished two seconds ahead of Busch for his 46th career truck victory, but his first since August 1, 2009 at Nashville.

"It was just a great day," said Hornaday, who led 129 of 200 laps. "Hopefully, it keeps everybody a little bit quiet, but it took [crew chief] Ernie [Cope] to come here and settle everyone down, because the guys were getting a little anxious. We know we've got a winning team, but we just had to prove it to them."

One year ago at ORP, Hornaday made series history by becoming the first driver to win four races in a row. Hornaday extended his record to five consecutive victories the following week at Nashville.

At the end of the 2009 season, Hornaday's then crew chief Rick Ren left his Kevin Harvick Inc. team and moved over to Kyle Busch's new Truck Series team to serve as director of competition.

Hornaday also won a truck event at ORP in 1997 and 2007. He will compete in Saturday's 200-lap Nationwide Series race for Kevin Harvick Inc.

Busch's second-place run was his best finish at this short 0.686-mile oval.

"We made it through the evening pretty well," Busch said. "I thought we had a shot to win there and battle with Hornaday a little bit. I felt like if maybe I could have stayed in front of him the results would have been a little different, but we knew going into practice, he was a little bit better than we were. Unfortunately, we just didn't have enough for him tonight."

Matt Crafton finished third, while Johnny Sauter and James Buescher rounded out the top-five.

Rookie Austin Dillon took the sixth spot, followed by Todd Bodine, the current points leader, Brad Sweet and David Starr.

Peters, who led 71 laps, faded in the late-stages and wound up finishing 10th.

Bodine now holds a 177-point advantage over Aric Almirola, who crashed halfway through the race and ended up with a 31st-place finish. Almirola got collected in an accident involving Mario Gosselin and Narain Karthikeyan.

"We're struggling, and we're racing for 20th," Almirola said. "We were trying to work on our truck and get it better with a hundred laps to go, and [Karthikeyan] kept running into me every corner. This place is as wide as they come for short tracks."

With the win, Hornaday moved up to fourth in the standings, trailing Bodine by 212 points.

Johanna Long made an impressive debut in the series with a 17th-place run. Long, who drove the No.15 Toyota for Billy Ballew Motorsports, became the youngest female to compete in a truck race at age 18.

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Betting the NFL preseason

Rule No. 1 in the gamblers' handbook states, "Avoid sports betting on meaningless games."

When you're drowning in a sea of baseball monotony, however, things change. Even a hint of pro football betting can persuade the most disciplined bettor to break a few rules. 

The NFL preseason is around the corner, with a tempting Hall of Fame match kicking off on Sunday. But bettors must stay vigilant. Wagering on NFL exhibition games is an entirely different beast than the regular season. Most fans don't recognize the players on the field because starters get as much action in August as Warcraft fans get on Prom night.

The only certainty about the NFL this time of year is uncertainty – and yet there are some who say betting in August can be a gold mine.

“I actually feel the NFL preseason presents solid profit opportunities for sharp bettors and handicappers,” Sports Expert Steve Merril explains. “My experience has been that the sportsbooks fear the preseason, which is evident by lower limits and massive moves.”

The line moves are attributed to the limited knowledge available regarding playing-time distribution. One team’s top unit out on the field for one more series has an impact on the pointspread. Setting lines in the preseason often is a shot in the dark.

“We base the betting lines mostly on public perception,” Pete Korner, founder of the Sports Club in Las Vegas, says. “It’s very tough to predict, almost a guessing game.”

The preseason is all about figuring out who’s in and for how long.

“It becomes a race between bettors and oddsmakers to find out how long the quarterbacks are going to stay in,” Korner admits. “If a sharp gets the information first, he could exploit an early line. I’m a full believer in moving the line in the preseason if the books find out something late in the week.”

Determining what each team’s motive is can help bettors handicap. To do this you must pay close attention to the philosophies head coaches employ in exhibition play.

“You need to know what a coach is trying to accomplish,” says Covers Expert Bryan Leonard. “Sometimes a new coach will want to instill a winning attitude. Others just want to make sure their starters don’t get hurt."

So how do you distinguish who’s playing scared and who’s playing for keeps?

“Head coaches on the hot seat or new coaches trying to implement a winning attitude usually try harder to win in the preseason,” Merril says.

Cleveland Browns head coach Romeo Crennel fits this criteria. He’s entering his third season as the sideline boss and has yet to lead the Browns to more than six wins.

Cleveland is an enticing bet as well because of the unresolved quarterback situation. General manager Phil Savage sacrificed the Browns’ first-round pick in next year’s draft for Brady Quinn, but the former Notre Dame quarterback hasn’t signed or reported to training camp yet.

Charlie Frye and Derek Anderson split time at QB last season and it looks like either player (or even Quinn) could be the opening-day starter.

“If a team has quarterback depth and the pecking order hasn’t been decided, it’s a big advantage,” Leonard says.

Even in the third week of the preseason when starters generally play the most, the final outcome of the game is in the hands of fringe players. A team's talent, all the way down to the last man on the roster, is something to consider.

The New England Patriots have long been considered one of the deeper teams in the NFL and coach Bill Belichick has said in the past he’s unafraid of stars getting hurt in games with nothing on the line. He shocked his colleagues in 2003 by playing some of his starters on special teams in the preseason.

“We want to have the team ready to play a tough, physical game and preparation has to go into that and I imagine a certain amount of injuries go with it,” Belichick told the Providence Journal in August 2003.

Bettors can only hope to find more teams that share the Pats' business-like approach to the preseason (New England is 17-9-3 against the spread since 2000) and take advantage of teams who detest the exhibition schedule.

To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your bet on football needs. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards.