Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with Las Vegas in the rearview mirror and Phoenix (Sun., 3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) right around the corner.
THE LINEUP ️
1️⃣ Kyle Larson is in a tier of his own – but is Cliff Daniels right about parity?
2️⃣ Is Phoenix Raceway going to produce another surprise winner?
3️⃣ The art of making the Vegas-winning move, turn-by-turn
4️⃣ Brad Keselowski, welcome back to Victory Lane?
5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
1. Kyle Larson is in a tier of his own — but is Cliff Daniels right? Is the field tighter?
When the 2021 champ is on, he looks untouchable. His No. 5 crew chief, however, claimed after Sunday’s win at Las Vegas that the field has tightened up quite a bit.
“The gap is tighter than it was in the fall, across the field.”
A lot of ears perked up after race-winning crew chief Cliff Daniels assessed the competition in his post-race press conference, noting the increased parity throughout the series after stomping it with a sweep of Las Vegas stages for Kyle Larson’s first win in 2024.
A quick glance at the year’s three winners — two of whom are returning Championship 4 drivers — and nothing seems too amiss, or at least much different than things stood the last time the series raced at Phoenix Raceway just a handful of months ago in the 2023 finale. A closer look, however, shows that the studious Daniels, unsurprisingly, knows what he’s talking about.
While Kyle Larson has won 16% of his starts with Hendrick Motorsports and will likely continue to hover around that number (which remarkably, for context, is a great deal better than Jimmie Johnson’s 12% career win rate), it appears parity continues to be the name of the game in the Next Gen era.
For instance:
– No driver has finished in the top 10 in all three races this season.
– Five of the top-10 finishers at Las Vegas collected their first top 10s of the season.
– Noteworthy names like Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece, Austin Dillon, Josh Berry and Todd Gilliand have yet to finish in the top 10 — despite Gilliland leading the second-most laps in the series.
– Five different teams have led 50-plus laps through three races — and this doesn’t even include Trackhouse Racing (42 laps led), which won at Atlanta.
With two superspeedway-style races behind us and only one more between now and the end of August we’ll likely start to see some of the cream rise to the top over the coming months. Given how even things look across the board right now, though, we almost have no idea who that might wind up being beyond Larson and his Daytona 500-winning teammate William Byron.
It’s early yet, but 2024 has the blueprint of an all-timer.
2. Is Phoenix Raceway going to produce another surprise winner?
Byron, Larson will likely see the front of the field at some point, but the desert 1-miler has become more unpredictable than you might imagine.
For fairly obvious reasons, the spring race at Phoenix each year holds a certain weight to it that title-hopeful teams always have in the back of their minds — considering 245 days after Sunday’s race, the championship will be decided on the very same race track.
We saw this bear out last March, with all four eventual Championship 4 drivers landing in the top six on the results sheet and Byron landing in Victory Lane. It seems obvious in retrospect, but looking at the six top finishers — Byron, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Larson, Kevin Harvick and Christopher Bell, respectively — at the time you probably could’ve made the correct assumption that they were going to be playoff drivers, but the entire Championship 4 coming from that group? Not the biggest leap, but quite far from any sort of foregone conclusion or slam dunk.
Strange and mysterious things can happen in the desert, and believe it or not — and especially now that the “Cactus King” Harvick has hung it up — Phoenix is turning into somewhat of a wild-card track, all things considered.
Don’t get it twisted, though — by “wild card” we don’t mean flukey in any way; the list of recent winners there is full of the sport’s stars and biggest names with several recent Cup Series champs among them. At Phoenix — a track notoriously hard to pass at — wins don’t come easy (for most, anyway; see, again, Harvick’s resumé), with the eventual race winner starting in the top 10 in 12 of the last 13 races at the Avondale, Arizona, facility.
Where it gets interesting, however, is that each of the last seven Phoenix races was won by seven different drivers — and six of those seven had never won at the track previously.
Something about this track and how much emphasis teams put on it seems to really open up the field for the taking, and perhaps especially now, given what Daniels alluded to earlier about the level of competition being tighter.
Look no further than someone like Chase Briscoe, whose lone career win came in this race two seasons ago. While Briscoe’s overall career results are still not quite where he wants them to be, the way over-simplified formula — bring a fast car, qualify it well, keep it in the top 10 all day and you have a shot — has worked for him the past couple of years. Not only has he finished in the top 10 in three of his last four races there, he’s run the fourth-most laps in the top five there among active drivers in the Next Gen era.
This begs the question, though — is this year’s Chase Briscoe lurking out there somewhere on the entry list?
3. NASCAR Inside the Race: The art of making the Vegas-winning move
It looked like Tyler Reddick might catch Kyle Larson in the closing laps at Vegas — but, well, it’s Kyle Larson. MRN’s Todd Gordon and NBC Sports’ Steve Letarte explain, corner-by-corner, how the 2021 champ held off his hard-charging rival.
4. Brad Keselowski, welcome back to Victory Lane?
The No. 6 RFK Racing driver and 2012 champ has topped the century mark in starts since his last win — but Phoenix has often seen dry spells snapped in the desert. Is this the perfect time for his first Phoenix win?
| Date of Phoenix win | Driver | Car | Races since last win |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 18, 2009 | Mark Martin | No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet | 97 |
| April 10, 2010 | Ryan Newman | No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet | 77 |
| Nov. 14, 2010 | Carl Edwards | No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford | 70 |
| Feb. 27, 2011 | Jeff Gordon | No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet | 66 |
| Nov. 13, 2011 | Kasey Kahne | No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet | 81 |
| Nov. 11, 2012 | Kevin Harvick | No. 29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet | 44 |
| March 3, 2013 | Carl Edwards | No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford | 70 |
| March 19, 2017 | Ryan Newman | No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet | 127 |
| Nov. 12, 2017 | Matt Kenseth | No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota | 51 |
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
Power Rankings: Ross Chastain looking like a big-time force in 2024
Paint Scheme Preview: See the schemes for Phoenix doubleheader
Two RFK Racing crew members suspended for detached wheel at Vegas
Analysis: Why Larson’s Vegas victory rings a bell for Hendrick Motorsports
Kyle Petty: Who’s the greater Kyle – Busch or Larson?
History, family intersect for Rajah Caruth in Las Vegas breakthrough
@nascarcasm: Fake texts to Las Vegas winner Kyle Larson
John Hunter Nemechek, JGR dominate Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas
Larson ties Chase Elliott for most Hendrick Motorsports wins
Which driver is favored to win 2024 title after Las Vegas?
Noah Gragson shows ‘never-quit attitude’ in top-10 Vegas finish
