LAS VEGAS — Of the events in the opening round of the NASCAR Playoffs, wasn’t Las Vegas supposed to be the more carefree race of the three?
There would be no easing into the 10-race postseason in Sin City, not on a steamy, topsy-turvy Sunday that cooked up a chaotic brew of cautions in the South Point 400. The contagious strain of fender-bending crashes and bad luck upended the Monster Energy Series playoff picture just one race in, leaving even the best of the bunch wondering why.
“Beats me,” said crew chief Cole Pearn, speculating as his driver, defending series champ Martin Truex Jr., leaned playfully on his shoulders. Pearn mentioned the 100-degree desert heat as a factor, but posed the question to Truex, Sunday’s third-place finisher: “You got any good ideas?”
“What?”
“About why they wrecked so much?”
“Ran out of talent,” Truex joked.
The No. 78 group emerged as one of the few postseason contenders able to muster smiles after the race’s dozen yellow flags, two short of the track record set in 2009. Over the radio or through peeks at the video displays, Truex watched his rivals drop one by one.
Kevin Harvick and Erik Jones first in a mid-race crash. Then Chase Elliott. Denny Hamlin followed. All placed outside the top 30.
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Kyle Busch had his own portfolio of trouble that included a grass-plowing spin out of Turn 4, but somehow assembled a rally to seventh place. Teammates Jimmie Johnson and Alex Bowman then fell from the lead lap with late-race issues. By the time the event crept into overtime with a particularly frantic tenor to the rash of restarts, teams sporting the neon-green Monster trim of the championship field had to be antsy.
“Even good guys were just spinning out on their own,” Pearn said, “so it kind of disrupted the flow of the race a lot.”
The new-look Round of 16 was the biggest shake-up to the postseason schedule for this year. Following Vegas are the close-quarters, short-track confines of Richmond Raceway and the cauldron of uncertainty that awaits at the Charlotte Motor Speedway combination oval and road course.
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At face value, leading off with one of the intermediate-sized layouts that dominates the Monster Energy Series seemed to be a tame proposition. But the ingredients were there for Las Vegas to be one of the more power-packed playoff openers in recent memory.
Start with the three-digit heat that left drivers fighting for both hydration and grip, but that also opened up multiple grooves of racing. Runner-up Kyle Larson was a fan: “For us to be able to run next to the wall and all over the place was a lot of fun,” said Larson, who had his own trouble to bear with an early pit-road penalty. “I wish we could run more races here in the heat.”
Add in the extra level of urgency for teams working toward early immunity ahead of the Charlotte Roval wild-card. Then maybe, just maybe, the spirit of Vegas’ reputation for gambling rubbed off on drivers scrapping for every position they could gain.
RELATED: Charlotte road course has drivers ready for ‘crazy’ first round
Dice-rolling in Las Vegas sounds about right, making for a can-you-top-that ante at the playoff-opening venue and leaving plenty of postseason contenders reeling.
“That’s a bad deal,” Larson said, eyeing the scattering of title hopefuls on the scoring monitor. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen to me next week.”
Richmond and Charlotte, your turn for an encore.
