LAS VEGAS — The vibrant marker on Las Vegas Blvd. that visitors flock to when they descend upon the hotbed Nevada destination was exactly the welcome Hendrick Motorsports needed this weekend as Chase Elliott and William Byron showed out with top-five finishes in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube.
A hot topic coming into the first intermediate track of the year was how the new Chevrolet body for 2026 would race on the 1.5-mile “Sin City” oval after the Hendrick stable had to grind through last weekend’s trip to Phoenix Raceway.
With speed aplenty between the Nos. 5, 9 and 24, Las Vegas offered a fabulous answer to how Hendrick would adapt to the unknown.
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“I thought we were pretty good today,” Byron said. “I think the second stage, from what I remember, kind of took off a little tight and then just kind of kept working on it. The long-run speed was really good, and really, every run no matter what our balance was, our long-run speed was pretty good. There’s something there that’s kind of carried over for us from last year, so really happy with that.”
Both Byron and Elliott plateaued outside the top five in the opening stage. It may have triggered some concerns about how hard they were going to need to dig for speed and track position similar to Phoenix, but Sunday was a 180-degree turn in the race dynamic. Just one caution for cause was thrown at Las Vegas, versus the 10 from a week earlier.
With long runs and the ability to settle in amid the transitioning track conditions, Byron said he found a happy medium that propelled him to a season-best third-place run.
“Kind of all weekend, we were just a little bit perplexed on what the car needed and it seemed like when the track rubbered in, it was like ‘OK, this is a lot more familiar for us,’,” Byron said. “Kind of got in that more familiar space that we normally are here, and it’s kind of the same old players at the front, too. So, was happy with that, and feel like our team is just continuing to grow and build.”
Elliott chipped away all Sunday to methodically find his way toward the front. The 2020 Cup champion even diced it up for the lead in Stage 2 with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell and teammate Kyle Larson part of a wild three-wide sequence.
Despite not leading a lap Sunday, Elliott ultimately put himself in position to have a shot at victory, but instead, Denny Hamlin took the checkered flag with the No. 9 Chevrolet coming short by half a second.
“Obviously, bummed — couldn’t go up there and get by in there in those closing laps,” Elliott said. “I thought we were really good there towards the end of the run, and the line had gotten really tidy around the bottom. I figured I was gonna have to move up at some point and was just kind of trying to time that up. Unfortunately, just never got all the way there those last couple laps.”
Elliott’s crew chief, Alan Gustafson, had glowing reviews for the Chevy body after Las Vegas, guiding the No. 9 team to its third top 10 in the first five races of the season, despite a lowly 23rd-place effort last weekend.
“Referencing body specifically, I’m excited about the car,” Gustafson told NASCAR.com. “I thought it obviously performed really good here. Really good hopes to start the season. We’d like to have been one position further, but you can just do the best you can, right? And the 11 was a little bit better today.”
Gustafson noted that the No. 9 had the balance right for most of Sunday’s 400-miler and that they could really find their footing in a free-flowing competition rather than the stop-and-start of Phoenix that resembled driving through “The Strip” just 15 miles from Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“Phoenix for us, we missed the mark so bad,” Gustafson said. “It was like an all-hands-on-deck day. It wasn’t what I would call normal. Today, this was really the first normal race of the season, right? You’re at an intermediate track, and it’s about executing. So it was fun to do it. I told the guys before the race, I just wanted to get a nice, mistake-free effort in the books and see where we stack up, so I think that we did that.”
MORE: Cup Series standings | Las Vegas recap
While Elliott leaves Las Vegas with “mixed feelings,” the start of 2026 is what the No. 9 team needs as they sit fifth in points and hold a steady 9.4 average finish as the circuit shifts to Darlington Raceway next Sunday (3 p.m. ET, FS1, FOX One, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It was a good start for this new package for us,” Elliott said. “We ran a lot better today than we’ve been running in quite some time. So I just hope we can build on that, you know, and give ourselves some more opportunities down the road. It was also one day. It’s a long, long season ahead.”