Kyle Larson Holds Off Tyler Reddick for Second Straight Las Vegas Win – Motorsports Tribune

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service

LAS VEGAS — Based on the box score alone, you might think Kyle Larson dominated Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. 

You’d be wrong. 

Yes, Larson led 181 of 267 laps at the 1.5-mile track. Kyle Busch led the second-most—18. And, yes, Larson swept the first two stages and took the checkered flag to secure his third victory at Las Vegas, tying Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski for most among full-time active Cup drivers. 

The truth is that Larson had to use all his consummate skills behind the wheel to hold off Tyler Reddick after a restart with 27 laps left. Larson had the short-run speed, enough to build significant advantages early in a run. 

But Reddick soon would begin closing the gap, so much so that with two laps left, Reddick was a scant 0.143 seconds behind Larson at the stripe, roughly one car-length. 

Larson, however, was adept at putting his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in a position to block the progress of Reddick’s No. 45 23XI Toyota, and when the race ended two laps later, Larson had increased the margin to 0.441 seconds. 

“I knew Tyler was going to be the guy to beat from the first stage,” said Larson, who won for the first time this season and the 24^th time in his career. “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. 

“Thankfully, (I) was able to air block him a couple laps and get him tight. I thought him and (23XI teammate) Bubba (Wallace) were going to get working together again to build a run, so I was happy that didn’t happen. 

“But all in all, such a great job by this Hendrick Cars Chevy team and just their execution, pit road, restarts—all that was great. Cool to get a win here at Vegas again. Back-to-back, swept all the stages again. Can’t ask for much more.” 

The closing laps brought a familiar pattern that had developed during the race. In both the first and second stages, Reddick was closing fast on Larson but couldn’t get close enough before the stages ended. The end of the race was déjà vu. 

“Yeah, Kyle did a really good job there of pretty much taking away every option I had to close the gap,” said Reddick, whose cause was hurt by pit road issues, including a slide through his stall….