What Happened?
Kyle Larson held off a hard-charging Tyler Reddick to take home his first victory of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday (March 3). While defending champion Ryan Blaney finished third, Larson and Reddick claimed class of the field all day, finishing one-two in the first two stages as a precursor to the finish.
As the laps wound down, Larson found himself in a familiar position. After dominating another mile-and-a-half, another Toyota grew larger in the rearview mirror of the No. 5.
When the race ticked under two laps to go, Reddick seemed poised to make a move on Larson until Reddick chose the bottom lane, placing his Toyota directly in the wake of Larson’s Chevrolet. Larson motored off the corner and away from Reddick, who saw the chance to snatch the win slip away.
Larson’s 24th career victory marks two straight wins for him and three straight wins for Hendrick Motorsports at Las Vegas. Since 2020, Chevrolet has won at least one Vegas event each season, and team Chevy remains undefeated in the NASCAR Cup Series this year.
What Really Happened?
After two drafting tracks kicked off the season in exciting fashion, drivers, teams and fans alike anticipated the first non-superspeedway race to really see where teams stacked up at the start of this new year.
Both Toyota and Ford made changes to the car bodies to try and close the gap to Chevrolet. In the Next Gen era, Chevrolet claimed victory in 37 of the 72 races, versus 18 wins for Toyota and 17 for Ford.
Toyota stood out in the NASCAR preseason, winning the Clash and both Daytona 500 duels, while Ford showed speed in qualifying, breaking the Chevrolet stranglehold on the Daytona 500 front row.
Despite all the speculation and anticipation to see how the new Mustang Dark Horse and Camry XSE compared to the old Camaro body, the Las Vegas race looked familiar to a number of other mile-and-a-half races we’ve seen with the Next Gen.
In both 2022 and 2023, Kansas Speedway put on a race where Larson led a lot of laps and faced a challenge from a Toyota at the end of the race. While Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin bested Larson in those finishes, Larson learned enough to hold off the late-charging Toyota of Christopher Bell last fall at Las Vegas.
Larson versus Toyota…
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