LAS VEGAS – Kyle Larson's second straight win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway puts him atop the NASCAR Cup Series points standings. In the victory, the 31-year-old driver led 181 laps en route to his 18th victory at Hendrick Motorsports. Since the start of the 2021 season, he has the most wins of any driver.
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Does the 2021 Cup Series champion believe this performance is a precursor to a dominant run like his title season – a year in which his first of 10 points-paying wins also came at Las Vegas?
"We have the potential within our team to do that," Larson said. "I think it will be much harder. When we won here in 2021, we killed them at the end—this one, we had to fight hard for it.
"We did everything great from start to finish. Pit crew, pit calls, restarts, the car itself, myself in the seat, blocking the right way and making speed while doing it was good."
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The victory was a total team effort. While Larson swept the stages and won the race for the fifth time in his career (Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2021, Sonoma Raceway in 2021, Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2022 and Las Vegas in 2023 are the other instances), the No. 5 HendrickCars.com pit crew kept aiding his cause throughout the day. Different tire strategies were at work throughout the race, but Larson's crew also kept him in an advantageous spot of typically being the first or second car on four fresh tires. From there, he wasted no time in driving to the lead.
"I'm so proud of the folks at Hendrick Motorsports in our pit department and the guys on the 5 team," No. 5 team crew chief Cliff Daniels said. "They put in the work. When you put in the work and have the reps, we have all the same guys from last year. They know each other. They understand each other and you have to keep evolving, which is what they've done. … They executed so well on pit road at the end of the race."
Daniels is part of that evolution, too. He is in his fourth year with Larson and talked openly about how they took what they learned from the No. 5 team’s win last October and improved on it for this past weekend. That evolution isn't just with his team, though. It also has to do with the Next Gen era and performance as other manufacturers bring in new cars to the series.
"Our sense of urgency is there," Daniels said. "We know that we've got to keep evolving, just the continuity of our stuff and keep understanding our stuff better.
"We still have to push. We still made setup changes from the fall to here because we didn't quite have the long-run pace that some other guys had in the fall. I would still argue we needed a little bit more today. We've got to keep evolving and we’ve got to keep pushing."
With the win in hand, Larson is focused on stacking up as many playoff points as possible. His title-winning season in 2021 saw him bank plenty of those but that total has not been as plentiful the past two years. The Elk Grove, California, native wants to be more consistent and earn the finishes indicative of his car’s pace on a given weekend.
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"You hope to keep stacking up stage points, stage wins and wins," Larson said. "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. It's a priority of mine this year to try and do a better job in the regular season to make life a little bit easier when you get to the playoffs."
