Despite Christopher Bell’s late charge, Larson sweeps stages to win SouthPoint 400 and secure spot in Championship 4
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
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Las Vegas-In 2021, a win in March at Las Vegas Motor Speedway kickstarted Kyle Larson to the NASCAR Cup Series championship and a 10-win season.
It just so happens that winning the South Point 400 in Las Vegas is the easiest way to punch your ticket to the Championship 4 at Phoenix in three weeks. When he won this same race in the round of 8 in 2021, he won his first NASCAR Cup Series title.
In Sunday’s SouthPoint 400, Larson dominated the day to punch his ticket to NASCAR Championship weekend and collect the 23rd NASCAR Cup Series win of his career. By virtue of winning this race, the team will now have two weeks to prep and be ready for that weekend as well. This very advantage helped Joey Logano win the title last season. This was Larson’s 4th points-paying win of the season and his 5th overall in 2023.
Winning this pivotal race doesn’t give the team a chance to take it easy and relax over the next two races either.
“I don’t know that it’s a lot different just because of the new car. To me, just from the team exercise dynamic of things, if we say we’re just going to cruise for the next two weeks, then you’re not operating with the edge that I think you’re going to need to win it in Phoenix,” crew Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 chief Cliff Daniels explained. “There’s two more races to win. So now the way I see it is this. Now that we’re in the position that we’re in, we get to play those races to win, a late call, flipping a stage, if a caution comes out, whatever it may be, versus having to play the race for points. I think that’s the position it puts us in the next two weeks.
“From a team exercise, all those other guys are so good, they’re going to be pushing hard to win the next two weeks,” he added. “I think we have to match that intensity so we’re going into Phoenix with the right level of intensity ourselves, get there with strength.”
In the race, the 31-year-old driver from Elk Grove had a max points day as he won both stages as well. Larson also led 7 times for a race-high 133 laps. One would think that after doing this the margin of victory would be large. However, this wasn’t the case. Over the last run of 30 laps, second-place finisher Christopher Bell started to reel Larson in from nearly 2 seconds back. On the final lap, Bell caught Larson and pushed him across the line. The margin of victory in the race ended up being .082 seconds, the second-closest margin of victory ever at Las Vegas.
Throughout the course of the season, Larson has had a tendency to have a hard time finishing races. The most recent example of this came at Texas when he spun from the lead on the final restart. On the other hand, these have all been growing moments for Larson as a driver, according to Hendrick Motorsports Vice Chairman and three-time NASCAR Champion Jeff Gordon.
“The guy knows how to win clearly. I mean, I think Cliff and he have some real heart-to-heart discussions about some of those instances on both sides,” Gordon explained. “I would say, whether it’s a strategy call or something, a misstep on pit road. It’s about being able to have the trust in one another where you can have those hard conversations because you want to get better, you just want everybody to get better. They’re able to do that. Kyle welcomes it.
“Every time I talk to him about some of those conversations, he’s like, ‘I welcome it, I love the intensity and passion that Cliff and the engineers bring, how they want to push me at all times. It’s good. No, I don’t think you can change that.’” Gordon continued. “You don’t want to change that in a guy like Kyle. If it’s a new up-and-coming younger driver and you feel like those are conversations that need to be had, yeah, you have ’em. I’ve never had to have that one with Kyle.”
On lap 141, Larson was in second and his car got loose in turn 2. But he saved it and kept it from ruining his day, a pivotal moment in the race. On his car, he ended up with a big dent on the right rear of the car as well from this incident.
“I was getting really loose at that point. It’s so bumpy in one and two that when you are loose, it makes it even worse going across those bumps,” Larson said of his save on lap 141. “I got a little out of shape, had a moment, thought I had it saved. Usually, when you do that, it just aggravates things. It stepped out really quick.
“Honestly, I was thinking I was just going to spin, then hit the inside wall,” he continued. “About that time I clipped the outside wall, got lucky. Was just thinking that I was going to do it again because now my right rear tire was scorched. I was so loose for the next however many laps before the caution came out. Thankfully that caution came out, kind of got to take a deep breath and really forget about that, try to forget about that moment as quick as possible, get refocused on the race ahead.”
This also rounds out a busy week for Larson. He won the High Limit Sprint Car Series title on Tuesday, then completed his rookie orientation for the Indianapolis 500 on Thursday before coming to Las Vegas and winning.
For Bell, this feels like a missed opportunity. In 2022, he had to win his way into the Championship 4 at Martinsville. The difference maker for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was when he was mired in lap traffic and had to change his line while tracking down Larson.
“I really feel like that was our chance,” Bell said afterward. “That was our chance to make Phoenix this year, and it slipped away from us. So we’ve got we still got two more races to get ourselves in position. So I feel good about that. To be that close stinks.”
Bell did have a good points day, which was something he could leave the Sin City with. He finished second in stage one and third in stage two, which puts him just 2 points below the cutoff line.
The rest of the top 5 was filled with drivers who were no longer in the playoffs. Kyle Busch finished third, Brad Keselowski was fourth, and Ross Chastain was fifth.
William Byron, Tyler Reddick, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, and Chris Buescher rounded out the rest of the playoff field finishing 6th through 10th, respectively, Byron is in second just 9 points above the cut, followed by Hamlin and Truex at 2 points above the line. Ryan Blaney had finished sixth but was disqualified due to an issue with his left front shock that didn’t meet the overall specified length. Because of this, he had been given a last-place 36th-place finish and lost the stage points he got throughout the day as well. This also puts him in a must-win situation over the next two races. However, this penalty was rescinded on Monday by NASCAR.
Reddick is 16 points below, then Blaney 17 points below, and Buescher at 23 below with two races to go until the cutoff.
The SouthPoint 400 also had 7 cautions for 36 laps.
The round of 8 will continue next Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the 4Ever 400 presented by Mobil 1. That race will start at 11:30 a.m. on NBC.
