For the last part of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it looked like it would be Kyle Larson’s lose. Then the yellow came out.
Every car came to pit road from the lead lap group, except Martin Truex Jr., who Byron beat out in a green-white-checkered finish.
“I’ve just been really confident about the group of guys I have on this 24 team,” Byron said on Fox. “Thankful to Mr. H and Jeff Gordon. This (car) was awesome. We knew we had speed and Rudy made a great call.”
Had Larson beaten Byron off of pit road, he would have launched from the front row.
The six tenths of a second at the No. 24 team found on pit road ended up being the difference.
“It’s just part of Cup racing,” Larson said on the broadcast. “It seems like you’re counting laps down one-by-one and the caution comes out, inevitably. You’ve just got to get over that… their pit crew must have done a really good job. (We) gave up the front row. It’s a bummer we didn’t end up the winner but Willy probably had better car than me today.”
The NASCAR Cup Series will return to the track next Sunday at Phoenix for the Ruoff Mortgage 500 at 2:30 p.m. on FOX.
NASCAR Cup Series results
Pennzoil 400
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Sun. March 5, 2023
1. William Byron
2. Kyle Larson
3. Alex Bowman
4. Bubba Wallace
5. Christopher Bell
6. Austin Cindric
7. Martin Truex Jr.
8. Justin Haley
9. Kevin Harvick
10. Daniel Suarez
11. Denny Hamlin
12. Ross Chastain
13. Ryan Blaney
14. Kyle Busch
15. Tyler Reddick
16. Aric Almirola
17. Brad Keselowski
18. AJ Allmendinger
19. Erik Jones
20. Corey LaJoie
21. Chris Buescher
22. Ty Gibbs
23. Ryan Preece
24. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
25. Michael McDowell
26. Harrison Burton
27. Austin Dillon
28. Chase Briscoe
29. Josh Berry
30. Noah Gragson
31. Todd Gilliland
32. BJ McLeod
33. JJ Yeley
34. Ty Dillon
35. Cody Ware
36. Joey Logano
