William Byron was able to hold off teammates Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman on Sunday (March 5) to win the NASCAR Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Byron dominated throughout, leading 176 laps of 270. Byron also won both stages.
With Chase Elliott out with a leg injury, the Hendrick Motorsports teams rallied and brought home a 1-2-3 finish for the third time in the team’s history.
A smiling Byron spoke with Jamie Little of FOX Sports after his win and was very complimentary of his pit crew they got him out ahead of Larson on the final restart.
“This Raptortough.com Chevy was awesome,” Byron said. “Honestly, when we got back in traffic, it was a little bit tight, but we knew we had speed so we just had to have the right things play out, and Rudy made a good call, so it was good.”
After Aric Almirola hit the turn 4 wall with four laps to go, the race went into overtime. Larson had the lead at the time but couldn’t beat Byron’s No. 24 off of pit road. Martin Truex Jr. stayed out.
It’s Larson’s best finish through three races after he was 18th in the Daytona 500 and 29th at Auto Club Speedway.
“I thought I did a really good job getting to my [pit] sign and getting to the commitment line,” Larson said. “I had a gap to William behind me and their pit crew must have just did a really good job and got out in front of us, and that gave up the front row to us. I knew I was in trouble with the [No.] 19 staying out. I felt like William was going to get by him.
“Yeah, just a bummer that we didn’t end up the winner, but all in all, William probably had a little bit better car than I had today, and their pit crew executed when they needed to there at the end.”
The ensuing restart was chaotic as usual, with Denny Hamlin suffering the most and getting shuffled out of the top 10. Byron was able to muscle his way past Truex quickly and sailed away with his fifth career win.
Truex finished in seventh for his troubles after his Hail Mary attempt panned.
Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five. Austin Cindric was sixth, Justin Haley had a much-needed good run finishing eighth, Kevin Harvick was ninth and Daniel Suarez rounded out the top 10.
Josh Berry had an eventful day filling in for Elliott as he ran the No. 9 Chevrolet into the wall and was…
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