NASCAR News: Larson out duels Reddick to win Vegas Cup race
Kyle Larson led 181 of 267 laps to win the Pennzoil 400 NASCAR Cup Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Raceway over Tyler Reddick.
Larson dominated the race in his #5 Hendrick Chevy and held off Reddick’s Toyota by 0.441s for his 24th NASCAR Cup win.
He holds off a hard-charging Tyler Reddick late at Vegas! Repost to congratulate Kyle Larson on his NASCAR Cup Series WIN. pic.twitter.com/AKpgdQnZfx
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 4, 2024
The #12 Penske Ford of Ryan Blaney held off Ross Chastain ‘s Chevy for 3rd.
Ty Gibbs rounded out the top-5 in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
It was Larson’s 3rd Cup race win in Las Vegas. He won all 3 stages and the race for a maximum points haul.
Both Chastain and Gibbs rebounded from pit-road adversity as Chastain suffered a speeding penalty in Stage 2 while Gibbs had a poor pit stop late in the same stage.
Noah Gragson, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and William Byron completed the top 10.
The Cup Series will continue its westward swing with a visit to Phoenix Raceway on March 10
Top-2 Quotes
What a dominant performance. What a day for you. You guys had a smooth race start to finish. Take me through the last 10 laps when you’re looking in the rear view at Tyler Reddick as he’s closing on you.
KYLE LARSON: I knew Tyler was going to be the guy to beat from the first stage. 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 was able to air block him a couple laps and get him tight. I thought him and Bubba 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.
Q. Tyler Reddick, the other side of the battle for the win there. You had it up against the wall, looked like you had forward momentum going at the end of the race and then it comes up a little bit short. How frustrating is that?
TYLER REDDICK: It’s the name of the next generation game, right? You get the lead, you’ve got to hold on to it. Yeah, Kyle did a really good job there of pretty much taking away every option I had to close the gap.
Yeah, he seemed pretty good in the middle, and I was obviously really good on the bottom. He just never let me have it.
I kept trying to run higher and higher and he was kind of running right in the middle of the racetrack there, was kind of pretty efficient to block both lanes. Every time I kind of got close, we’re running just wide open enough in Turn 1 and 2 that he could kind of defend pretty well. It’s frustrating. I feel like we were never up front really all day long until it got to the stage end.
We had a really good Nasty Beast Toyota Camry and just stupid mistakes on pit road. Same shit, different year. It’s kind of frustrating.
We’ll continue to work on it, but a good rebound for our team today.
Pennzoil 400 Cup Race Results
| POS | CAR | DRIVER | MANUF | BEHIND | LAPS |
| 1 | 5 | Kyle Larson |  |
0.000 | 267 |
| 2 | 45 | Tyler Reddick |  |
0.441 | 267 |
| 3 | 12 | Ryan Blaney |  |
3.827 | 267 |
| 4 | 1 | Ross Chastain | |
4.356 | 267 |
| 5 | 54 | Ty Gibbs | |
4.577 | 267 |
| 6 | 10 | Noah Gragson | |
4.859 | 267 |
| 7 | 19 | Martin Truex Jr. | |
5.418 | 267 |
| 8 | 11 | Denny Hamlin | |
6.307 | 267 |
| 9 | 22 | Joey Logano | |
6.794 | 267 |
| 10 | 24 | William Byron | |
7.113 | 267 |
| 11 | 99 | Daniel Suarez | |
7.626 | 267 |
| 12 | 9 | Chase Elliott | |
8.178 | 267 |
| 13 | 6 | Brad Keselowski | |
8.696 | 267 |
| 14 | 43 | Erik Jones | |
11.209 | 267 |
| 15 | 77 | Carson Hocevar # | |
11.757 | 267 |
| 16 | 3 | Austin Dillon | |
12.223 | 267 |
| 17 | 47 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | |
12.543 | 267 |
| 18 | 48 | Alex Bowman | |
12.689 | 267 |
| 19 | 31 | Daniel Hemric | |
13.255 | 267 |
| 20 | 4 | Josh Berry # | |
13.876 | 267 |
| 21 | 14 | Chase Briscoe | |
14.214 | 267 |
| 22 | 42 | John Hunter Nemechek | |
14.627 | 267 |
| 23 | 41 | Ryan Preece | |
15.676 | 267 |
| 24 | 38 | Todd Gilliland | |
16.632 | 267 |
| 25 | 34 | Michael McDowell | |
17.271 | 267 |
| 26 | 8 | Kyle Busch | |
23.467 | 267 |
| 27 | 51 | Justin Haley | |
23.576 | 267 |
| 28 | 16 | Derek Kraus | |
24.085 | 267 |
| 29 | 2 | Austin Cindric | |
24.621 | 267 |
| 30 | 21 | Harrison Burton | |
29.805 | 267 |
| 31 | 15 | Kaz Grala # | |
29.994 | 267 |
| 32 | 7 | Corey LaJoie | |
-1 | 266 |
| 33 | 20 | Christopher Bell | |
-2 | 265 |
| 34 | 44 | * JJ Yeley(i) | |
-6 | 261 |
| 35 | 23 | Bubba Wallace | |
-13 | 254 |
| 36 | 71 | Zane Smith # | |
-13 | 254 |
| 37 | 17 | Chris Buescher | |
-240 | 27 |
(i) NOT ELIGIBLE FOR POINTS
(*) REQUIRED TO QUALIFY ON TIME
LEADERS
| CAR | TIMES | LAPS |
| 5 | 8 | 181 |
| 45 | 1 | 1 |
| 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 19 | 1 | 4 |
| 11 | 1 | 16 |
| 22 | 1 | 3 |
| 24 | 2 | 15 |
| 99 | 2 | 15 |
| 48 | 1 | 3 |
| 31 | 1 | 1 |
| 14 | 1 | 1 |
| 34 | 1 | 4 |
| 8 | 1 | 18 |
| 16 | 1 | 2 |
| 17 | 1 | 2 |
LEAD CHANGES
| CAR | START | END | TOTAL |
| 22 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 5 | 3 | 12 | 10 |
| 31 | 13 | 13 | 1 |
| 17 | 14 | 15 | 2 |
| 14 | 16 | 16 | 1 |
| 24 | 17 | 30 | 14 |
| 5 | 31 | 31 | 1 |
| 99 | 32 | 42 | 11 |
| 8 | 43 | 60 | 18 |
| 5 | 61 | 84 | 24 |
| 19 | 85 | 88 | 4 |
| 11 | 89 | 104 | 16 |
| 5 | 105 | 119 | 15 |
| 1 | 120 | 120 | 1 |
| 45 | 121 | 121 | 1 |
| 5 | 122 | 158 | 37 |
| 48 | 159 | 161 | 3 |
| 5 | 162 | 210 | 49 |
| 24 | 211 | 211 | 1 |
| 99 | 212 | 215 | 4 |
| 34 | 216 | 219 | 4 |
| 16 | 220 | 221 | 2 |
| 5 | 222 | 239 | 18 |
| 1 | 240 | 240 | 1 |
| 5 | 241 | 267 | 27 |
CAUTIONS
| # | LAP | BENEFICIARY | REASON |
| 1 | 9 | Possible fluid on track | |
| 2 | 26 | 71 | #17 incident turn 1 [Red Flag: Lap 33; 10:39] |
| 3 | 32 | ||
| 4 | 80 | 24 | Stage 1 Conclusion |
| 5 | 156 | 16 | #20 spin turn 2 |
| 6 | 165 | 23 | Stage 2 Conclusion |
| 7 | 234 | 31 | #7 incident turn 2 |