LAS VEGAS – Kyle Larson took the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 to victory lane on Sunday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Larson won for the third time in his career at Las Vegas, where in 2021, he got his first win driving for Hendrick following a nearly yearlong suspension in 2020. Larson also won last October in the No. 5 Chevy at Las Vegas in the playoffs.
Larson held off Tyler Reddick for his 24th career Cup victory. In a Toyota for 23XI Racing, Reddick chased Larson for the final several laps but could never find enough room to make a move for the pass. Larson’s margin of victory was 0.441 seconds over Reddick.
There were six caution periods for a total of 35 laps. Thirty-one of the 37 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
Larson leaves Las Vegas as the championship leader with an eight-point advantage over second-place Ryan Blaney.
Hendrick Motorsports is celebrating its 40th anniversary this season and opened the year with William Byron winning the Daytona 500.
Stage 1 Winner: Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stage 2 Winner: Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stewart Haas Race Finish:
- Noah Gragson (Started 30th, Finished 6th / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
- Josh Berry (Started 26th, Finished 20th / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
- Chase Briscoe (Started 6th, Finished 21st / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
- Ryan Preece (Started 36th, Finished 23rd / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
SHR Points:
- Chase Briscoe (20th with 53 points, 65 out of first)
- Josh Berry (30th with 37 points, 81 out of first)
- Noah Gragson (34th with 25 points, 93 out of first)
- Ryan Preece (36th with 14 points, 104 out of first)
Gragson earned his second top-10 of the season, and first top-10 in three career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Las Vegas.
This was Gragson’s best finish so far this year. His previous best was ninth, earned in the season-opening Daytona 500.
“These guys are good. It feels good to do it in front of the hometown crowd,” said Noah Gragson, driver of the No. 10 Fanttik Ford Mustang Dark Horse. “At the end, I was battling Ty (Gibbs) and Ross (Chastain) for a top-five. I wanted a top-five, but coming from 30th to sixth, I’m just really proud of everyone’s effort. This Mustang Dark Horse is bitchin’. It’s fast, and it’s been really good. This compared to last year has a lot more speed. You can go where you want. We’ve got a good pit crew and just a good team. We will take this and return to the positives in points and keep working, learning, and becoming better than we were yesterday. Just keep that attitude. I think we’ve got the tightest group in the garage. They’re awesome to work with and I love every one of them.” –
Gragson’s sixth-place result bettered his previous best finish at Las Vegas – 11th, earned in October 2022.
This was Berry’s best finish so far this year. His previous best was 25th, earned in the season-opening Daytona 500.
“I think we saw a lot of potential with the new (Ford Mustang Dark Horse) body style,’ said Josh Berry, driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1/Take 5 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. “Definitely each run it seemed like as a company, one of our cars was stronger than the other. But we learned a lot, and our car definitely had some speed. We’ve just got to work on fine-tuning it and I need to work on starting just a little bit closer to the front, and all of those things start to compound and we have a little bit better of a day. But overall, I thought we were solid.” –
Berry’s 20th-place result bettered his previous best finish at Las Vegas – 29th, earned last March.
Briscoe led one lap, increasing his laps-led total at Las Vegas to seven.
Before (the contact with Ryan Blaney), I thought our car was pretty good,” Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse. “We weren’t good enough to win, I didn’t think, but we were definitely a fifth- to 10th-place car fairly easily. I was able to pass a lot of cars. That second run of the race, we kind of went backward, but after that we were able to continue to go forward and I was really happy with the way my car was driving. After the contact, as soon as it happened, I went into the next corner and we were a half a second slower that lap and just continued to stay a half a second slower than we had been for the rest of the race. Kind of head-scratching, not really sure what happened as far as why we lost a half a second. Definitely a tough one to swallow when we had that good of a car – we definitely had a top-10 car and ended up finishing 21st. That part’s kind of frustrating, but we’re going to Phoenix where we’ve had speed in the past and see if we can just get a better run.”
“We just did what we could with what we had for the day. Without practice, really, what we had was really what it was going to be. That’s that,” said Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Shriners Children’s 500k on Sunday, March 10 at Phoenix Raceway. The race begins at 3:30 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FOX and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
