LAS VEGAS – Kyle Larson swept the stages at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and had to hold off a charging Tyler Reddick in the closing laps for the victory in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race.
After winning the first two stages – the first of which gave Hendrick Motorsports its 100th stage win – Larson held the lead at the start of the final stage. He led all but 12 laps of the 102-lap final segment but still had to keep Reddick, who finished second in both stages, at bay. A strong 9.78-second pit stop during the final caution with 30 laps to go kept Larson in the lead. The final 15 laps saw Larson and Reddick in a cat-and-mouse game. One would gain a little on one lap, then the other on the next. After his lead got down to 0.25 seconds with three laps to go, Larson blocked a move to the bottom to get his advantage back up to 0.4 seconds and secured the win.
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"I knew it was going to be cat and mouse," Larson said of his late-race battle with Reddick. "I knew I was going to have to catch him off guard with a late kind of block. "The bottom was good, but he was making some time up top in (turns) three and four. I felt like going back to the fall, (Christopher) 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.
"...With two to go, he expected me to run the middle or top or something. I was able to do a nice lazy arc to the bottom and take his air away in the center of (turns) three and four and got him tight. That killed his run down the frontstretch and thankfully that was the white flag. I knew as long as I hit my marks I would be safe to the checkered.
Starting second in the 267-lap event, Larson took the lead for the first of eight times on lap 3. The team had a brief scare in the second stage when the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 took some contact leaving pit road but the crew indicated everything looked good and the results showed as much. Larson led a race-high 181 laps for his 24th win in the sport's top series.
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"All in all, such a great job by this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy team," Larson said. "Just their execution, restarts, pit road. All of that was great. Cool to get a win here in Las Vegas again, back-to-back and swept all the stages. Can't ask for much more than that."
The 2021 Cup Series champion has three wins and five top-two results in his seven starts at the Nevada track with Hendrick Motorsports. Las Vegas is the track where Larson and crew chief Daniels have gone to victory lane the most together.
"He is so good at tracks with a lot of character," Daniels said of Larson. "That's a testament to the different types of cars that he drives all the time. He can adapt to so many different things. We are going to see him do that again here in about three months (at the Indianapolis 500), which is going to be a lot of fun to watch.
"He's so good at moving the different lanes and how the car reacts in those different situations. I would argue we haven't had the outright best car every time that we've won (at Las Vegas). He's done a really good job on restarts. We all know how important clean air is. We've given him something that he can drive and do what he's good at to go put it in position."
Daniels noted that the team looked back on its notes from the win last fall to find areas that could be improved for this race.
"We had great short run pace, but we didn't have very good long run pace," Daniels said, reflecting on their victory last October. "We took what that foundation was. We built on it and evolved. We closed the gap from short run pace to long run pace a little bit better for today and we'll look to do more of that for next time as well."
Larson's 18 victories at Hendrick Motorsports are tied for third on the organization's win list with teammate Chase Elliott. Larson also passed Geoff Bodine for fourth on the team's laps led leaderboard.
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Hendrick Motorsports has won two of the first three races this season, with William Byron taking the season-opening DAYTONA 500. The team has a series-best 303 wins in the Cup Series and is three laps away from crossing 80,000 laps led.
"A great start for Hendrick Motorsports, winning two out of three races," team president and general manager Jeff Andrews said. "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 anniversary. Getting started this way, this really couldn't go any better.
"... Really proud of the effort that the company is putting in and our dedication and focus in our 40th anniversary."
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In addition, the Rick Hendrick-owned team has won four straight spring races at Las Vegas and has been victorious at the 1.5-mile track a series-high 10 times.
Byron had a tough but persevering day in the No. 24 Z by HP Chevy, but he rebounded to score a top-10 finish. Starting fourth on the day, the 26-year-old driver quickly drove to second behind his teammate Larson. On lap 17, he took the lead. After restarting seventh on lap 36 due to varying tire strategies, the No. 24's water temperature started to run high with debris on the nose. This forced an unscheduled pit stop to remove the trash from the grille and Byron went a lap down. By the end of the stage, he was able to receive the free pass. Restarting 34th for the second segment, Byron fought a tight condition in his race car and drove up to 14th at the end of the 85-lap stage. In the final stage, the Charlotte, North Carolina, native restarted 22nd, and 30 laps later, he had worked himself into the top 10. He overcame a late pit stop where he had to back up into the box to fight for a 10th-place finish, his fourth top-10 in his last five Vegas starts.
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Elliott took the green flag from the 11th position in his No. 9 LLumar Chevy. In the opening stage, he reported to crew chief Alan Gustafson that the car was a little tight. After finishing the opening 80-lap stretch in 15th, the pit crew helped the 2020 Cup Series champion gain ground for the second segment restart. His car came on strong late in that stage as he joined the top 10 on lap 125. A late caution in the stage saw everyone hit pit road and he restarted eighth. Strong work on the closing four-lap run resulted in Elliott's sixth-place stage two finish. In the final stage, Elliott spent most of it in the top 10 and peaked in fourth on lap 210 before pitting on the next lap. The 28-year-old driver was happy with the car's balance before taking the final restart with 27 to go from seventh. He lost a few spots in the last run to finish in 12th.
Alex Bowman started 23rd in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. He fought a tight on exit race car early but was freer on the bumps in the closing portion of the stage. Bowman's car came on strong late in the opening segment and he finished 12th. A clutch stop by the Ally Racing pit crew put Bowman inside the top 10, which he maintained for the first half of the stage. After falling outside the top 10 late in the stage, a caution opened the door for a strategy play from crew chief Blake Harris. He called his driver down for right-side tires and that move put Bowman in the lead with four to go in the stage. While Bowman could not keep the top spot, he did finish in eighth to gain valuable stages. Mired in traffic in the final stage, Harris brought his driver to pit road early in the pit window and that helped Bowman cycle out to seventh with 45 laps to go. He stayed in the top 10 going into the final restart with 27 laps to go. Unfortunately, the 30-year-old driver lost ground and fell back in the running order, ending the race in 18th.
In the last three races at Las Vegas, Hendrick Motorsports has swept the stages and led 574 of 805 laps (71.30%). The team led 199 circuits on Sunday – Larson (181), Byron (15) and Bowman (three) paced the field at different points. Over the last nine races at Las Vegas (dating back to 2020), Hendrick Motorsports has earned 12 of the 18 stage wins. Larson has six, Elliott picked up three, Byron tallied two and Bowman notched one. The team's 12 stage wins at Las Vegas are its most at any track on the schedule.
Hendrick Motorsports now has 45 wins on the West Coast, with 10 coming in the last 19 races in that region. In addition, the team has a series-best six wins on 1.5-mile tracks in the Next Gen era.
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Leaving Las Vegas, Larson holds the points lead by eight markers over defending series champion Ryan Blaney. Byron is fourth, Elliott is tied for sixth and Bowman is 13th.
Phoenix Raceway is next up for the quartet on Sunday, March 10, at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90). As a company, Hendrick Motorsports has a series-best 13 wins at the 1-mile track and Byron is the defending spring race winner. In addition, Larson (2021) and Elliott (2020) won the title races held at the Arizona track to earn their respective Cup Series championships. Byron is entered in Saturday's NASCAR Xfinity Series race (4:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in the No. 17 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro.
