The Pennzoil 400 came down to a duel between Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick with the 2021 Cup Series champion taking a defensive clinic to Victory Lane for his second consecutive clean sweep at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Reddick clearly had the faster car over the final stint but couldn’t close out upon reaching him over the last 15 laps.
“It’s the name of the next generation game, right,” Reddick said on FOX after the race. “You get the lead (and) you’ve got to hold on to it. Yeah, Kyle did a really good job there of pretty much taking away every option I had to close the gap.”
Reddick made up the deficit on the bottom but Larson would ‘air block’ his way to maintaining the lead. Every line that Reddick would run, Larson would take away.
You can see what that looks like on the chart below. Reddick had the faster car, closed the gap but then saw his lap times spike in the dirty air off the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5.
Reddick tried faking low but Larson was able to match that too.
“I kept trying to run higher and higher and he was kind of running right in the middle of the racetrack there, was kind of pretty efficient to block both lanes,” Reddick said. “Every time I kind of got close, we’re running just wide open enough in Turn 1 and 2 that he could kind of defend pretty well. It’s frustrating. I feel like we were never up front really all day long until it got to the stage end.”
The only chance Reddick had was that they were approaching his teammate, Bubba Wallace, 32 laps down after a broken center luck lug earlier in the race, and that maybe the No. 23 would air block Larson.
Or even replicate what Reddick and Wallace successfully did during a previous run when the No. 23 pushed the No. 45 on fresher tires and really ate into Larson’s lead.
Instead, they both just drove by him and Larson won for the first time this season, through three starts, and the 24th time in his career.
“I knew Tyler was going to be the guy to beat from the first stage,” said Larson during his FOX frontstretch interview. “He was really fast there. I was hoping those guys were going to get racing a little bit longer behind me, because I felt like it was going to time out where he was running really hard and getting the tow to catch me at the end.
Byron’s sloppy, unfortunate race
William Byron might have been the only driver who could match Larson based on pure car speed.
After all, both cars came out of the Hendrick Motorsports shop.
The No. 24 led twice for 15 laps over the first 50 but captured a very large plastic bag on the nose of his Chevrolet. Crew chief Rudy Fugle was forced to call Byron down pit road to remove it and passing was so challenging that he could only make it back to P10 by the end of the race.
“It was huge,” Byron said of the bag. “It seemed to get stuck somewhere … I don’t really know. I just know my temps went from like 250 to 350 in like 10 seconds. I’ve never had that happen.”
Byron placed some of the second half challenges on himself too.
“It was just sloppy,” Byron said. “The whole thing. Had good speed. We’ll take the top-10 and go to Phoenix.”
Chastain tries too hard
That Ross Chastain finished fourth given every setback they faced was a testament to their car but also a gutsy strategy call by crew chief Phil Surgen.
First, Chastain was forced to give up his 20th place starting position before the race due to unapproved adjustments that sent him to the back. That sounds worse than it really was as a piece of vinyl had come lose near the hood louvers after qualifying and team chose to repair it, an unapproved adjustment.
Chastain made up ground quickly and even finished eight in the first stage, then came green flag pit stops, with the No. 1 running inside the top-five. For the third week in a row, Chastain was caught speeding and he lost a lap serving a pit road speeding penalty.
He got the free pass during the penultimate caution and was running 15th at the time of the final caution. Surgen opted to take just right-side tires and came out second. He lost only two positions over the next 25 green flag laps.
“That was everything or we would have been back in the teens,” Chastain said on pit road after the race. “Two tires, put a spare tire on, our car was good enough in clean air to run with those guys. It didn’t matter how many tires. I wanted clean air. He said it, and I yelled ‘yes’ over the radio, because I wanted that clean air.”
He even led a lap over Larson on the restart.
“This car was so good,” Chastain said. “It’s what I’ve always dreamed of and trained for, having cars this good, and it’s what makes it hurt worse. If we have an eighth-place car and finish fourth, that’s high fives but this …”
He couldn’t get over the speeding penalty because he believes this was a potentially race winning car.
“I can’t believe that I sped on pit road all three weeks,” Chastain said. “That took us out of contention when we were strong enough to take the fight to (Larson) and (Reddick). I just cannot believe I did that.”
What can he do differently?
“Just slow down,” Chastain said. “I’m trying too hard. It’s ridiculous. It’s unnecessary. I know better. I train better. My team prepares me better. I’m not pushing the pedals right. I cannot believe I’m talking about this, three weeks in a row.”
The battle for third
Since the season finale, in which Chastain won ahead of champion Ryan Blaney, it seems like the two can’t escape each other.
That was certainly true at various points on Sunday at Las Vegas and it was true in the final laps too.
At Phoenix, Chastain was air blocking Blaney tremendously, and it really drew the ire of the eventual champion, who was worried that it would cause him to back up to his closest championship pursuer, Larson.
At the time, Chastain said very bluntly that ‘I do not care’ how Blaney felt about it. So when the roles were reversed on Sunday at Vegas, Blaney air blocking Chastain in the closing laps, he was amused by the role reversal.
“The 5 (Larson) and I had a few side drafts and knew if we couldn’t get to the lead, it was playing defense,” Chastain said. “I really ran as fast as I could there at the end.
“It was really cool to see Blaney blocking me there at the end. It was cool to see his, uh, evolution with the air blocking. I’m proud of him.”
He said that last line with a cheeky chuckle.
For his part, Blaney felt like he never had the speed to challenge Larson and Reddick so taking a third ahead of Chastain was the best they had.
“I was able to get ahead of the 11, 19, who were both pretty good,” Blaney said. “It was a good learning experience and I hope we’re in a good spot.”
Home cookin’
Noah Gragson enjoyed his best overall day as a Cup Series driver and did it in his childhood back yard too.
He finished sixth, but it was more about the overall performance, running around the top-10 all day and driving from 12th to 6th on the final run of the race. His best ever Cup finish was a fifth at Daytona in August 2022 for Beard Motorsports but this was a true total performance on a downforce (non-drafting) track.
“This is the first true testament,” Gragson said. “I don’t know. Blaney was up there and maybe a couple other guys in the Ford camp, but this Mustang Dark Horse is bitchin’. It’s fast and it’s been really good. You can see the speed that it’s had in qualifying, not for me because I drove like a sissy out there, but with the other guys they have three poles so far this year, so we’re going good.”
Gragson suffered a 35-point penalty alongside teammate Ryan Preece this week for unapproved roof air deflectors but otherwise has two top-10s this season through three races.
As good of a day as it was, Gragson leaves Vegas with a full notebook of things to continue working towards.
“Yeah, we definitely need to be better and I need to clean some stuff up,” Gragson said. “Really, other than that last restart, I don’t think I had any net gains on restarts, so I need to keep working on that. I’m still trying to figure it all out, but overall it’s a good stepping stone to where we’re at right now.
“We’re going to take this and get back into the positives in points and just keep on working, keep on learning and becoming better than we were yesterday and 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.”
Rowdy’s penalty too much to overcome
Kyle Busch led for 18 laps and looked to have comparable pace to Larson, Reddick and Byron.
But NASCAR deemed that his pit stop on Lap 210 came with his front splitter just outside of the box and forced him to serve a pass through penalty. He got a free pass to get back on the lead lap but could only finish 26th by the end.
Bubba’s bad break
Bubba Wallace entered the weekend as the only drivers with top-5 finishes in the first two races but that streak ended when he lost 13 laps on pit road needing to have his left front center lock lug cut off his car.
Buescher’s hard hit
Chris Buescher never even got a chance to race, suffering a detached wheel that sent him hard into the wall, just 28 laps into the race.
The impact was so severe that it necessitated a red flag to repair the SAFER Barrier where his No. 17 struck it.
“I broke the wall?” Buescher said upon leaving the infield care center. “Not what I wanted to do today. It was not on my list.”
Making matters worse is that he will have two crew members suspended for two races since the wheel came off while he was on the track.
He had no warning either.
“No, nothing that says that was coming,” Buescher said. “That’s kind of been the case with this car. I’ve probably had three of these now through the last couple of years and haven’t had a warning on any of them. It’s nothing like the old five lug stuff where you’d get a vibration or a shimmy or have some kind of clue. It just happens all of a sudden.
“It’s very unfortunate there, very tough. We have a great group of people on our team right now and we’re going to bounce back from this and get going in the right direction. That hurts just so early. We were able to move forward out of there. We took two tires and was doing okay and holding our own against four tires around us and just ended up out way earlier than we wanted.
“I guess we talked a little bit yesterday and probably truthfully for the first time in my career I’m excited about Phoenix after what we had last time there. I won’t have to lie about that, but certainly a bad day today. It’s very disappointing. That sucks.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.