Las Vegas Decided by Pit Stop for 2nd Year in a Row

What Happened?

Coming off pit road as the first car on two tires, William Byron lined up alongside Martin Truex Jr. (who stayed out) for an overtime restart. Byron made quick work of Truex with fresh rubber and then cruised to his fifth career NASCAR Cup Series win and his first at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, March 5. Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman came home second and third to complete a 1-2-3 sweep for Hendrick Motorsports.

But What Really Happened?

In an uncharacteristically uneventful race for the Next Gen car at 1.5-mile tracks, Hendrick Motorsports was the story out front for the entire afternoon. HMS cars combined to lead all but 30 of the 271 laps, and once Byron took the lead from polesitter Joey Logano on lap 10, no one was able to touch him for the first two stages.

With a car that has wowed on the intermediate tracks since its inception, the first two stages ran caution free and were largely devoid of action out front. Byron was on cruise control after taking the lead in stage one and only Larson was able to keep pace with him by the time stage one concluded.

Stage two was much of the same. Larson was once again the only car to keep touch of Byron, who was in his own zip code by this point. Byron swept the stages for the first time in his Cup career, and the No. 24 car was sitting pretty after retaining the lead for the start of the final stage.

But a three-wide squeeze sent Logano into the outside wall and spinning through the grass on lap 183, and Byron lost the lead on pit road after leading 172 of the first 185 laps.

Larson took control of the race after the dust settled on the restart and with 10 laps to go, it was the No. 5 car with a near insurmountable lead over Byron. But the caution came out for Aric Almirola with four laps to go, and it was deja vu from this race one year ago as the leaders had a choice to make on pit road once again.

Four tires was the losing call last year, and all the frontrunners sans Truex took two tires this time around. But Larson had a longer pit stop that allowed Byron to have a front-row starting spot on the restart, and that proved to be the difference as the Las Vegas spring race was won (and lost) on pit road for the second straight year.

Who stood out?

Byron, obviously.

Coming off of a somewhat frustrating 2022 that saw him win twice but only finish in the top 10 11 times, the No. 24 car meant business from the moment the green flag dropped. Byron…