Larson puts on clinic on way to another dominant Las Vegas win in the Pennzoil 400 despite late challenge from Reddick
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
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LAS VEGAS-Kyle Larson and Las Vegas Motor Speedway have been a great match as of late. He has just been dominant there as of recently.
In Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube, he took the field to school as he won his second spring race at the track and his third race overall there.
On top of this, it was very similar to the race in the fall as he won all three stages to collect the maximum points and take over the points lead. He did this in the fall as well. This was also Hendrick Motorsports 4th straight win in the spring race at Vegas.
“I mean, it’s good,” Larson said of the huge points day. “You hope to keep stacking up stage points and stage wins. I look at it, like last year, yes, we made it to the Final Four, but I didn’t do a great job in the regular season. I crashed a lot. We didn’t finish as high up as the speed in our car in the regular season.
“There’s a lot of bonus points on the table for the end of the regular season,” Larson added. “It’s kind of a priority of mine this year is to try and do a better job in the regular somebody to make life a little bit easier when you get to the playoffs have something days like today early in the year definitely helps things, but you still have to carry it on throughout the next 20, whatever it is, two, three races before the playoffs start, and then yeah, once you get in the playoffs, there’s still a lot more points out there. Just try to be more consistent than I was last year, and like I said, finish all the laps, and hopefully the points will take care of themselves.”
He led 8 times for 181 laps, which is by far the most of anyone for the day. This was his 24th victory in the NASCAR Cup Series as well.
This was also the second win for Hendrick Motorsports over the first three races. Chevrolet has also won every race in the NASCAR Cup Series this season, too. Chevy has won every race this season except for Saturday’s Xfinity Series race won by Toyota’s John Hunter Nemechek.
“Obviously a great start for Hendrick Motorsports, winning two out of three races here,” said HMS President and GM Jeff Andrews. “I think what we’re most proud of is what we’re doing for Mr. and Mrs. Hendrick this year and the celebration of the 40th year for them and getting this started this way, this really couldn’t go any better. Obviously, if we would have won last weekend, that would have been the best it could. Just really proud of the effort that the company is putting in and our dedication and focus in our 40th year. Cliff hit on it earlier, but the Chevrolet contingent right now is as tight as it’s ever been, and the key partner groups and even outside of that are working really good together because we know we have very little margin here. We know we’re up against a new car with Ford and Toyota.
“We have to do our best to work together and keep advancing this car,” Andrews continued. “We’re obviously early on in the season here, a lot of racing to go, and they will get there, as Cliff said. 45 was very good today and you saw a couple (of) Fords up there. Anytime that you change a platform on those cars as much as they’ve had, it’s going to take a little bit of time. Both of those OEMs certainly have a lot of potential, and we’re going to have to keep pushing really, really hard to keep ourselves in.”
His sponsor HendrickCars.com also got back to victory lane for the second time this weekend after Rajah Caruth won on Friday in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
As the laps were winding down, it looked as if second-place finisher Tyler Reddick was starting to close. But Larson air-blocked him over the final few laps to hold him off. Reddick was drafting with teammate Bubba Wallace, which helped him close the gap a bit in the final stage as well.
“Yeah, I knew it was going to be cat and mouse. I knew I was going to have to kind of catch him off guard with a late kind of block,” Larson said of the blocking down the stretch. “Yes, the bottom was good, but he was making some time up top in 3 and 4, and I felt like going back to the fall, Bell was catching me around the top and I didn’t quite move up early enough or thought at the time that I could have maybe not had that last-lap battle if I moved around a bit more.”
His only other closest competitor early on was Hendrick Motorsports teammate and Daytona 500 winner William Byron. A large garbage bag went over his grill, which forced him to pit and lose all of the track position he had gained after getting to second. Byron was able to fight back for a 10th-place finish.
Also having a strong car was Ross Chastain. His day was ruined by a speeding penalty on pit road.
“It is surreal because I can not believe that I sped off pit road all three weeks,” Chastain explained. “We were strong enough to fight with the (No.) 5 and (No.) 45 and I took us out of that. Cannot believe it.”
This was his third speeding penalty over the first three races. He’s had the speed to compete in every race to this point.
“Slow down,” Chastain said of what he needed to do to finish a strong race. “(I’m) trying to. It’s ridiculous it’s unnecessary, and I know better. I trained better my team prepares me better and not pushing the pedals right. I cannot believe I’m standing here talking about it again.”
Defending champion Ryan Blaney brought it home in third and Ty Gibbs rounded out the top five.
The NASCAR Cup Series will be back in action next Sunday in the Shriner’s Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway, which will be aired on Fox.
