Posted on by Holly Cain

LAS VEGAS — Defending Las Vegas race winner Brad Keselowski is among those expecting the intensity to increase this weekend with the playoff opener. A three-time winner at Vegas, Keselowski is a favorite this weekend and conceded that he’s fully prepared to do whatever is necessary to earn one of the coveted winner’s trophies en route to the Homestead-Miami Speedway Championship finale.

However, he cautioned that “aggressive” behavior on track isn’t so much a result of the playoff intensity, but a necessary mode in winning races, period.

MORE: Top quotes from Playoff Media Day

“The racing is always changing and evolving,’’ said Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford. “If it didn’t, it would always be really boring. The cars keep getting after it and the drivers push them and each other harder. Combine that with the rules on the cars making it so important to make your passes on the restarts, you really have such a narrow window of time to make something happen that you throw more desperate punches, so to speak.

“Sometimes I certainly challenge myself to be more aggressive than years prior. That is a different challenge, but a good one.’’

Keselowski’s teammate, 25-year old Ryan Blaney is making his third consecutive Playoff appearance. He won last year’s Charlotte Roval Playoff race and finished 10th in the championship standings. For him, the Playoff portion of the season is about consistency not necessarily changing the intensity.

“Honestly, I don’t really like to change up kind of the way you go about things in the playoffs,” said Blaney, who drives the No. 12 Team Penske Ford. “Honestly, if you get to playoff time and then you start driving 110 percent now, I try to do that all year.

“Yeah, the intensity level picks up in some scenarios but I just try to be the same because at the end of the day it is the same goal all year. Racing and winning races and getting points. You know what the end goal is. You can’t have mistakes.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

LAS VEGAS — Six drivers in the 16-driver Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff field are past champions of the sport, all vying for title No. 2 in the final 10-race stretch.

The half-dozen hopefuls weighed in on what a second championship would mean to them Thursday at NASCAR Playoffs Media Day, on the eve of on-track activity at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend. Their answers were an intriguing mix that touched on their motivations, their legacies and the greater meaning of becoming a two-time champ.

RELATED: Full schedule for Las Vegas

Kurt Busch, 2004 champion: “It would mean the world to me, and to be able to deliver for Ganassi and have (crew chief) Matt McCall and this whole group of guys who have been together for a long time, I appreciate things more now — the teamwork, the team camaraderie, and the chemistry — whereas early in my career when I won at 26 years old, I was like, yeah, it’s all about me. But now I feel like it’s that team effort and I love the way that this team has come together. They’ve looked at me for that guidance and that leadership, but at the same time, we’re just having fun with it and executing as a team, and it would mean the world to me to bring another championship home and to have that Monster Energy Cup next to the old Nextel Cup that I have, it would really be a huge bookend to my career.”

Kyle Busch, 2015 champion: “I’m sure it’s going to mean more than just one. I don’t know exactly what it would mean, but I don’t think two – two would change it over one, but I think when you get to three, it’s not going to be that big of a deal. Then four and five would be huge. That’s kind of what I look at. If I could get a handful of them, I would say that’s probably a successful career. Years ago if you would have asked me that question, I would have said, seven or eight is possible. Right now, probably five I would say.”

Kevin Harvick, 2014 champion (mentioning what it would mean to celebrate with his young children, Keelan and Piper): “For me, those are pretty motivating factors just because of the fact that I enjoy him being around successful moments and them being around successful moments but I also enjoy them being around the moments and try to help them understand, especially Keelan at this point, understand what it took to get to that point because it wasn’t that way at the beginning of the year.”

RELATED: See what the entire 16-driver field had to say

Brad Keselowski, 2012 champion: “Well, it would be a huge mark for me personally. I think there is a big difference between drivers that have won one championship and two, that is my own personal barometer. There is quite a long list of drivers in the sport now and past that won a single championship. The ones that I think get mentioned or thought of the most are the drivers that have won multiples. Certainly winning a championship is a legacy. Winning a second championship is an elite legacy in the sport. Something I certainly hope to do and have put a lot of emphasis on and probably is the biggest thing I want to do in the sport. That opportunity is in front of us over these 10 weeks.”

Joey Logano, 2018 champion: “I don’t know. I don’t know if your legacy should be totally hinged on championships. It is nice to say you have one and it would be nice to say you had two and it would be nice to say you had seven but I don’t know if that is what really creates a true champion. I don’t know if it is how many you have. It is what you do with it. What do you do with the platform that God has given you? That is what I think creates a true champion and Hall of Famer. When I was asked that question at the Hall of Fame vote this year, that is what I brought up. What is a Hall of Famer? Is it a champion or someone that has done something to help our sport and help everyone in our sport to grow. I think that might be more of a Hall of Fame thing. Do you have to win a championship to do that? No. I don’t know if winning another championship alters your legacy that much if you don’t do anything with it.”

Martin Truex Jr., 2017 champion: “I’m here to win. I really don’t think about those kind of things. If you think about it, it messes with your head. Yeah, I try not to think about those things. I try to go out there and do the best that I can and hopefully have the opportunity to enjoy it someday.”

Posted on by Staff Report

Insane speed, car wrecks and NASCAR champions — sounds like the makings of a great race day. But for the first time in decades, the excitement of motor racing is taking on a new meaning for the sport’s youngest fans (kids!) as NASCAR rolls out the Adventure Force Kid Zone experience featuring new NASCAR toys at multiple raceways this Fall.

On the heels of NASCAR and Walmart announcing that they would bring back NASCAR toys, Darlington Raceway Throwback Weekend proved to be the perfect backdrop to unveil the new NASCAR Adventure Force Crash Racers (Figure 8 Circuit) – the first in a new line of NASCAR-branded racing sets from Far Out Toys.

In Darlington, NASCAR invited hundreds of kids and their parents to try out the new racing set at the Adventure Force tent in the Fan Zone, where kids even got to play with the new racing set against NASCAR drivers. The 2-day event brought out some of biggest names in NASCAR, including Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Kyle Busch, NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Noah Gragson, Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Clint Bowyer, and NASCAR Gander Outdoor Truck Series driver Natalie Decker.

Far Out Main 1

And to bring the thrill of these new toys right onto the racetrack, Noah Gragson drove a fully wrapped NASCAR Adventure Force Crash Racers stock car on Saturday, featuring a striking paint scheme. The HobbyKidsTV family, from the massively popular YouTube channel with 100+ million kid viewers each month, came out to join in on the NASCAR crash racing action and got to go behind the scenes with Gragson and get up close to the Adventure Force race car.

Far Out Main 2

The Adventure Force Kid Zone experience will be available at select raceways this season including at Dover International Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. Kids, parents and grandparents are invited to join the crash racing fun. NASCAR Adventure Force Crash Racers is now available exclusively at Walmart stores nationwide and at Walmart.com.

Posted on by Zack Albert

LAS VEGAS — A common refrain about the NASCAR Playoffs starting now is the idea of the clean slate, a chalkboard wiped fresh and ready for the 10-race story ready to be told. But that notion also discounts the 26 races that preceded the postseason and their impact.

Enter momentum. The 16-driver field will carry varying degrees of it from their regular-season body of work into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, which begin with Sunday’s South Point 400 (7 p.m. ET, NBCSN/NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

RELATED: Playoff Media Day best quotes | Series standings |  Full Vegas schedule

Seeding and a stockpile of playoff points matter, but so does the way drivers make an entrance into the season’s home stretch. Clint Bowyer and Ryan Newman sit in a virtual tie at the bottom rungs of the postseason pecking order, but the way they rallied and clawed their way into the playoff field could sustain them in the early going.

“Momentum is confidence. It is confidence in your decision making and your driving and everything,” Bowyer said during Thursday’s media day activities at the South Point Hotel Casino and Spa. “Your decisions for the setup and your decision for passing and stage points that are so important. You have to have that momentum and confidence in your mind. That is not just the driver, that is the crew chief making those calls.”

MORE: Newman’s underdog quest enters playoffs

There’s an intriguing duality at the other end of the playoff heap. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. sit 1-2-3 with four victories each during the first 26 races. While Hamlin has roared into the playoffs with a sturdy finishing kick, Busch and Truex have cooled slightly, with Busch nursing a 12-race drought and Truex going 10 races without a triumph — losing streaks that most teams would envy.

“I think that we had a little bit of a lull there right after those four, but I feel like the last five or six races have been really good,” said Truex, who notched his four wins in a torrid eight-week span this spring. “We’ve been in position to do a lot of great things, it’s just … things haven’t played out. We’ve had a few mistakes here and there.”

RELATED: Meet the 16-driver playoff field

Truex then listed a brief bout with misfortune — the flat tire at Bristol, a loose wheel elsewhere, some bad bounces with pit strategy. “It’s just been those kind of things have taken us out of a few races. … So we’ve been right there, we just haven’t had that spark, that magic. Nothing’s gone the way we wanted it to. We just need that little bit extra. Hopefully we can turn it up here this weekend.”

Hamlin’s head of steam ranks among the series’ strongest, with a recent streak of six straight top fives buoying his No. 11 JGR team. When asked if this represented his strongest chance at finally clinching the first championship in his 14-year career, Hamlin answer was clear: “No doubt.”

“We’ve been running as good as we ever have right in this moment,” Hamlin said. “I just don’t see any weaknesses that we necessarily have right now. We are performing well in all aspects of our race team. You just hope that the things you can control, you control well. If you do that, we will be fine.”

Erik Jones, the last of the Joe Gibbs Racing quartet of playoff hopefuls, has experienced both ends of the momentum pendulum in a two-week span: First place in a triumphant Darlington drive one week, then next-to-last place in the Indianapolis finale the next. The pre-playoff approach for him is obvious: savor the former, discard the latter.

“The points are reset, you’re racing a different group of guys and not really racing the whole field anymore and you just have to focus forward,” Jones said. “I look at what we’ve done the last few months and just focus on that. Think about what we’ve done to be fast, successful and in contention to win and just need to continue that trend.”

RELATED: Making the case for and against each driver winning it all

The idea of continuing trends or starting new ones was the theme of Thursday’s media gathering. The “I’m excited” buzzword — adapted from preseason media days — was nearly omnipresent, but contrasted against the backdrop of drivers who have weathered the regular-season grind to get here.

Momentum abounds, but so does the hope of reaching the ultimate goal in the 10 races ahead.

“I mean, why be here if you don’t think that?” said Chase Elliott, who enters as the No. 7 seed. “I mean, there’s no point in even coming to this Playoff Media Day if we don’t feel like we have a shot; or, even being in Vegas in general.

“So yes, I do think we can do it.”

Posted on by Holly Cain

LAS VEGAS — This Saturday’s Rhino Pro Truck Outfitters 300 (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) brings the regular season to a close and formalizes the 2019 Playoffs lineup for the Xfinity Series. And while three drivers – defending series champion Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell and Cole Custer – have absolutely dominated the win column, none of the three has won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before in this series.

Reddick won the 2016 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series race at Vegas, but has not hoisted an Xfinity Series trophy there. Yet.

He’s highly motivated coming off his worst showing of the season last week (30th) following an accident with fellow title contender Christopher Bell in the final laps of the Indianapolis race. Bell finished 29th.

And still the Richard Childress Racing driver’s consistency this season – 19 top-five and 21 top-10 finishes through the opening 25 races – will likely land him the regular-season championship (he needs to earn 11 points this weekend to clinch). Reddick holds a 50-point lead over Joe Gibbs Racing’s Bell and an insurmountable 113-point edge over Stewart-Haas Racing’s Custer heading into this week’s season finale.

MORE: Full Xfinity Series standings| Playoff clinching scenarios

Certainly the top of the standings is a known quantity with these three accounting for 16 victories already – Reddick (four), Bell (six) and Custer (six). But the playoffs present a sort of reset.

The 12 drivers currently holding postseason spots are clinched on points, but this regular-season finale could prove interesting if a driver outside that group of 12 wins the race and the automatic playoff spot that accompanies. RSS Racing’s Ryan Sieg currently sits in that precarious 12th  position.

The other drivers who have clinched a postseason bid are Team Penske’s Austin Cindric, Stewart-Haas Racing with Fred Biagi’s Chase Briscoe, JR Motorsports teammates Michael Annett, Justin Allgaier and Noah Gragson, and Kaulig Racing’s Justin Haley. In position to clinch this week are Brandon Jones, rookie John Hunter Nemechek and Sieg.

Of note, Haley will have a celebrated teammate at Kaulig Racing this week as longtime Xfinity Series championship challenger Elliott Sadler will make his final NASCAR national series start. Sadler – a three-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race winner and 13-time Xfinity Series winner – retired from full-time competition last year and has announced his race Saturday will be his last in NASCAR’s highest tiers of competition. He has four top-fives in 13 Las Vegas Xfinity Series starts.

Posted on by Holly Cain

LAS VEGAS — The first elimination of the 2019 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Playoffs happens this week following Friday night’s World of Westgate 200 (9 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

The 2016 Gander Trucks champion Johnny Sauter is on the wrong side of the cutoff, but this is a tightly packed playoff field – only six points separate third-place Stewart Friesen and seventh-place Sauter, with six drivers advancing to the Round of 6.

RELATED: Full series standings | Las Vegas schedule

Brett Moffitt has reminded everyone why he’s the defending series champion, winning the first two Round of 8 races – at Bristol and the Bowmanville, Ontario,road course – and he’s technically the only racer with a sure spot in the next round. He has never won a race on this week’s 1.5-mile Las Vegas high banks, however. And regular season champion Grant Enfinger is actually the defending winner of this September race.

Ross Chastain, a three-time winner this season, won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas last fall and is currently second to Moffitt in the championship standings by 22 points.

Friesen is third, 44 points behind Moffitt with two-time series champ Matt Crafton on his heels, just one point off Friesen. Austin Hill is fifth in the title run, only a point behind Crafton and Enfinger is only two points behind Hill. Sauter is two points behind Enfinger and Tyler Ankrum is 12 points behind Enfinger, who holds that sixth and final cut-off position.

Moffitt finished runner-up to Kyle Busch in the March truck race at Vegas with Crafton and Friesen in third and fourth place. Sauter was eighth, Chastain 10th and Hill 30th. At that point in the early season, the now 18-year-old Ankrum wasn’t old enough to compete on the 1.5-mile speedway. 

Among the championship eight, only Enfinger (last year) and Sauter (in 2009) have celebrated in Las Vegas’ Victory Lane. Ben Rhodes joins the pair as the only other driver entered this weekend who has won at Vegas.

Posted on by Chase Wilhelm

LAS VEGAS – Although Ryan Newman narrowly clawed his way into the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, he says making a deep run in the 10-race stretch is possible.

And why not? He’s done it before.

In 2014, Newman raced the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing entry into the Championship 4 following a last-ditch effort in the season’s penultimate race at ISM Raceway. He nearly completed the underdog story with his first title, falling just short of Kevin Harvick at Homestead by finishing second in the standings.

This time around, it’s a more daunting task for the No. 16 seed, but not impossible.

“We’ve proved that we know how to fight,” Newman said during NASCAR Playoffs Media Day at the South Point Hotel and Casino on Thursday. “We’ve proved that we can point our way in. It’s going to be harder and harder to do that and the math is different than it was in 2014. To me, we need to go out there and step up our performance and still have a level of consistency.”

RELATED: Ryan Newman driver page | Full Vegas schedule

While that consistency is what landed him in the playoffs in the first place, it’s the unpredictability of the postseason where Newman might have the moxie to thrive.

“I think it takes a pretty stubborn individual to thrive in unpredictability,” Newman said. “I guess maybe I fit that criteria. It’s so situational because if something happens in the first race and then you see a little retaliation or payback or people start driving differently because they’re desperate. That desperation is something you just can’t predict.”

Aside from the confidence Newman has in his team, he also noted that the math works out for him to advance through the first round, at the very least. Through the season’s first 13 races, Newman had an 18th-place points car, while the second half of the regular season saw him rise to a 12th-place points car.

“We have to step that up again another four, six spots or whatever, but we have to do it in a three-race stretch,” Newman said. “That’s good enough, but I don’t want to be just good enough, I want to show progression. That shows that we can keep our feet on each rung of the ladder as we work our way up.”

If Newman can produce strong runs in the first three playoff races at Las Vegas, Richmond and the Charlotte Roval, a replication of 2014 could happen — but the road will be long.

Good thing he’s traveled down the same path before.

“It’s interesting because to me the hardest round is the first round, especially when you’re in my position where you’re the last man in and have zero points to your advantage,” he added. “Basically, I think we’re 11 points out of eighth, which is just a number, but that’s a little bit of a stage in one race. It’s all easily doable.”

Posted on by Staff Report

Trackside Live is back this weekend in Sin City! The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series and Gander Outdoors Truck Series all head to Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend for desert races — and two Trackside Live shows.

The live shows are Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET and Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET. Guests for the shows include Kyle Busch, Noah Gragson and Tyler Reddick on Saturday and Kyle Larson, Erik Jones, Austin Dillon, Brendan Gaughan, Matt DiBenedetto and Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy on Sunday.

WATCH: Trackside Live | MORE: Full schedule for Las Vegas | Buy tickets

The Trackside Live crew will come prepared with games, Q&As with drivers, prizes and a lot of family fun for everyone. Join in on this unique experience, take home some great stuff and even better memories in advance of Sunday night’s playoff opener, the South Point 400 (7 p.m. ET, NBCSN/NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Aren’t able to make it to the track this weekend? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! You don’t have to miss a second of the Trackside Live fun as the entire show will be streamed live on NASCAR.com here.

Posted on by Staff Report

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs kick off this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the South Point 400. Sixteen drivers will vie for the title over the final 10 races of the season.

This first of the three-race Round of 16 is on the 1.5-mile Sin City track for the second year in a row. The point totals have been reset for the playoffs, with regular-season champ Kyle Busch leading the way in the standings by a 15-point margin over Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin.

Here is the rest of the need-to-know information for Sunday’s playoff opener.

TRACK DETAILS

Las Vegas is a 1.5-mile, tri-oval asphalt track with 20-degree banking in the turns and 9-12 degree banking on the front and backstretch. The track was built in 1996, and the Cup Series has been racing there since 1998.

RULES PACKAGE

The race at Las Vegas will feature the 2019 rules package with aero ducts and a tapered-spacer engine generating a targeted 550 horsepower.

Each team will be provided with three sets of Goodyear Eagle Speedway Radial tires for practice, one set for qualifying and 10 sets for the 400-mile race (nine, plus one transferred from practice or qualifying).

The Monster Energy Series gets a break from its string of hard-wear tracks with its trip to Vegas.

“Las Vegas is widely known on the NASCAR circuit as a track that does not wear tires,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “That is an important concern for Goodyear and the race teams because when tires don’t wear, they don’t shed rubber and therefore retain more heat. What that requires us to do is bring tread compounds that will wear more and help the tire run cooler. We’ve done a lot of development work in this area, with a number of tracks that have ‘smoother’ surfaces. We’ve come up with a successful right-side tire that accomplishes that, and we now bring that to multiple tracks — Texas (Motor Speedway), Kansas (Speedway), Michigan (International Speedway) and Kentucky (Speedway), in addition to Las Vegas.”

STATS

  • Nine different drivers have won the pole for the last nine Las Vegas races that held qualifying.
  • Brad Keselowski has either won or been passed for the win in six of the last seven Las Vegas races, including in March when Joey Logano passed him with 24 laps remaining.
  • All six of the active Monster Energy Series drivers with wins at Las Vegas (Busch, Keselowski, Logano, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.) are also former Cup Series champions.

Source: Racing Insights

LIVE COVERAGE

This weekend’s race will air live Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on NBCSN and streamed on the NBC Sports App. Radio coverage can be found on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Also, follow along on NASCAR.com for live Lap-by-Lap coverage, the live leaderboard, Drive (featuring in-car cameras) and RaceView (subscription: in-car audio, stats, more). Be sure to set your lineup in Fantasy Live and make your picks in the Props Challenge.

2018 RACE WINNER

Keselowski is the defending race winner at Las Vegas, a victory that capped his third straight win during a 2018 hot streak that also included triumphs at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. Keselowski scored Team Penske’s 500th organizational win with this checkered flag. He avoided a series of wrecks and mishaps that befell several other playoff drives, and he beat Kyle Larson to the finish line in a two-lap, overtime shootout.

ACTIVE LAS VEGAS WINNERS

Johnson, four times; Keselowski, three times; Harvick, two times; Logano, Truex and Busch, one time each.

Posted on by PJ Walsh

The Action Network specializes in providing sports betting insights/analytics and is a content partner with NASCAR. Check out more NASCAR betting analysis here.

After a 26-race regular season, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) playoffs get underway this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

While 16 drivers are now eligible to run for the hardware, seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson finds himself on the outside looking in for the first time in his career.

To make this week’s NASCAR Props Challenge picks, I’ll rely heavily on betting odds to project expected driver performance, as well as race trends from the March MENCS race at Las Vegas.

1. Which playoff driver earns the higher finish: Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney?

Larson is currently 12-1 at the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas to win Sunday’s race, while Blaney is 20-1. Let’s lean on Vegas here and take Kyle.

Pick: Larson

2. Kyle Busch has four top fives in his last seven starts at his home track. Does he earn another top five on Sunday?

Busch is currently the favorite to win with +450 odds, but expecting a top-five finish in a field with so many fast race cars is too rich for my blood.

Pick: No

3. Which team will have the highest finishing driver: Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske?

This is really close, but with Busch the favorite and all four Joe Gibbs cars listed with odds of 12 or better, I have to go JGR.

Pick: Joe Gibbs Racing

4. Ford drivers have won the last three Las Vegas races. Does that streak continue: Yes or No?

Download the FREE Action Network app to finish reading this article and get the rest of PJ Walsh’s NASCAR Props Challenge Picks.