Spire Motorsports’ Las Vegas Performance Was Its Best Yet

Rajah Caruth’s first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series win on Friday night (Mar. 1) was a statement for 2024’s new-look Spire Motorsports team. Its performance in Sunday’s (Mar. 3) NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was icing on top on the cake.

Both Corey LaJoie and Carson Hocevar ran in the top 15 for much of the afternoon and LaJoie passed cars inside the top five during the first stage.

But of course, the finishing order doesn’t reflect the speed that the duo had.

Hocevar finished 15th while LaJoie finished a lap down in 32nd after a late crash. We never even got to see what Zane Smith had in store this weekend, as he finished in 36th, 13 laps down after early contact with the wall damaged the toe link of the No. 71 car.

If finishing order was all that mattered, Spire’s Sunday in Las Vegas wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar. In 297 Cup entries since the team’s inception in 2019, Spire has recorded 24 finishes inside the top 14 and 24 finishes that bested its latest showing in Sin City.

However, upon closer examination of the team’s best finishes, there’s a noticeable trend: a prevalence of superspeedways.

Of Spire’s 24 finishes inside the top 14, 17 of them came between Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway’s new configuration. Just seven of the team’s top-14 finishes came at the rest of the tracks on the schedule and superspeedways also account for 10 of the team’s 11 top 10s.

It’s clear that Spire and LaJoie in particular have figured out superspeedway racing, but running well on those tracks doesn’t correlate to the remaining 30 events on the schedule.

Of the seven top 14s that didn’t…