1. Is Kyle Larson the title favorite?
In this week’s edition of premature predictions that surely won’t backfire or prove to be wrong, Kyle Larson and the No. 5 team already look championship caliber after trouncing the field in Sunday’s (March 4) NASCAR Cup Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Larson swept the first two stages and led 181 of the 267 laps on his way to the 24th victory of his Cup career and 18th since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021. And after a bad break the week before at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Larson surged from 11th in points to the lead after scoring the maximum 60 points in Sin City.
That said, Sunday wasn’t a complete cake walk. Tyler Reddick kept Larson honest in all three stages, and it took early pit road miscues from the No. 45 team and a game of cat-and-mouse aero blocking in the closing laps for Larson to eke out the win.
But with three races in the books, Larson looks just as good, if not better, than he did to start 2023. And while he wasn’t winning 10 races last year, the No. 5 team brought some of the fastest cars to the track each week. Larson was second in wins last year with four, and he led 1,127 laps, the most of any driver. Yet last year was also one of missed opportunity, as Larson recorded eight DNFs, 11 finishes of 25th or worse and three finishes outside the top 30 after leading at least 75 laps in the race.
If he can keep the car clean and turn the 25th-place finishes of yesteryear into the top 10, top five and winning drives of today, there’s no telling how far Larson could go in the 2024 season. We aren’t in ‘The Kyle Larson Era’ just yet, but we’re getting close.
2. John Hunter Nemechek, 2024’s Buschwhacker?
John Hunter Nemechek won seven Xfinity Series races for Joe Gibbs Racing last year, and he’s continuing to add to that total in 2024 after a dominant win at Las Vegas last Saturday (March 3).
Nemechek is currently scheduled to run 10 Xfinity races this season for JGR’s No. 20 car, but with driver vacancies in JGR’s expanded four-car lineup, there’s the potential for him to run more.
The No. 19 car was announced to have a driver lineup consisting of Ryan Truex, Joe Graf Jr., Taylor Gray and William Sawalich, while the No. 20 car had Nemechek and Aric Almirola splitting the ride. But for Las Vegas and the upcoming race at Phoenix Raceway, Almirola has been named as the driver for the No. 19. If Almirola keeps getting moved,…
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