Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Who Won?
Joey Logano. He held on after staying out during a late set of pit stops to secure his first win with Paul Wolfe.
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Penske and unpredictability
It took a year later than the sanctioning body likely would have preferred, but NASCAR got the sort of early statement race it’s been chasing with the 550-horsepower rules package in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400.
From the drop of the green flag the NASCAR Cup Series field put on an event filled with unpredictability and change. Kevin Harvick led early and often with a No. 4 Ford showcasing strong short-run speed. Chase Elliott proved dominant on long runs, shooting past everyone else to claim victories in both of the race’s early stages.
Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano hung around throughout the day, keeping themselves in the picture. Martin Truex Jr. contended early on before suffering issues. Others like Jimmie Johnson, Matt DiBenedetto and Alex Bowman made their way to the front and found themselves in contention with the laps winding down.
There weren’t many wrecks – only four in total, with the other quartet of cautions coming from a competition yellow, stage endings and Daniel Suarez’s stalled car on the opening lap. But those that did occur all came in the closing stage, spaced out to allow for intense green-flag racing, but close enough to keep the field from getting too strung out.
Those cautions proved key to the end of the race. The penultimate yellow flew on Lap 221 of 267 when Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet suffered a flat tire from what was positioned to become the lead after green-flag pit stops. It shook up the race, affording Ricky Stenhouse Jr. a way to contend after being able to pit under caution and regain track position.
Logano and Harvick took off with the lead on the ensuing restart, but Blaney tracked them down over the course of what seemed to be the final long run and took over the top spot on Lap 255. Just when the Penske prospect seemed comfortable, Bowman shot up the field and rose to second behind him.
The pair seemed poised for a late battle when the caution flew again for a Ross Chastain spin on Lap 262. Suddenly the race hinged all on a late decision to pit or stay out.
Blaney and Bowman pitted. Logano stayed out and took over the lead.
That proved to be the difference. Logano survived a final chaotic restart, led at the white flag when the caution flew and celebrated his first triumph with former Brad Keselowski crew chief Paul Wolfe atop the pit box. The pair seemed to have a miscommunication when Logano stayed out, but the 2018 Cup Series champion claimed it was the plan all along.
“We talked about this scenario, whether it’s at the end of a stage or end of the race, if it comes down to it, can we get clean air, or at what point are we comfortable staying out,” he said. “Paul came over the radio and said, ‘stick to the plan.’ I said, okay, I’ll stick to the plan. That was it.”
Five laps after pitting from the lead, Blaney took the checkered flag in 11th.
“The caution came out and we pitted, some guys didn’t, some guys took two and we just end up getting absolutely destroyed with people not knowing how many cars were to the outside of them,” he said. “It’s easy to look back on it and say we should have stayed out. That’s a tough call for Todd Gordon in his position, but I’ve got to thank him for giving me a really good car.
“We were great on long runs. We were so good on long runs and that’s something to hold our heads up high about, it just stinks about the finish.”
Bowman followed in 13th and shared similar disappointment with the result, but was happy to have contended for a win after struggling through the latter half of the 2019 playoffs. “It sucks to at least be looking at second, probably a win with as fast as we were,” he said. “That’s a big bummer, but at the same time, I’ll take that over running fourteenth all day.”
Sunday’s end result was a familiar win for Logano, coming a year after a similar triumph in the Pennzoil car. But the race around it was intriguing, mixing strategies and sheet metal in a showcase that left numerous questions heading into Auto Club Speedway.
A day for surprises…But not Toyota
A glance through the top-10 at the conclusion of Sunday’s race could elicit understandable surprise from any fan returning from 2019 – due to both the drivers inside of it and those that failed to make the cut.
Matt DiBenedetto surged to a second-place effort in his second points race with Wood Brothers Racing, matching his career-best result from Bristol Motor Speedway in 2019. But where the Bristol run left DiBenedetto frustrated to miss victory lane amid an uncertain future at the time, Sunday’s result was a refreshing sign of hope and promise for the months ahead in a new partnership.
“It took so many people to get me this thing and we’re close – the second race of the season and we’re already starting off with a second-place finish,” DiBenedetto said, a smile on his face. “That’s great.”
Just behind DiBenedetto was Ricky Stenhouse Jr., earning his best finish outside of superspeedways since Bristol in 2016. His run also came after a fresh start, following his Daytona 500 pole from a week earlier with JTG-Daughterty Racing.
The key to Stenhouse’s success? Pit strategy. Brian Pattie kept Stenhouse out later than the rest of the field during the final round of green-flag pit stops and caught a timely caution. He kept the Mississippian out again under the final yellow to allow Stenhouse a chance to secure his seventh top-three finish in the Cup Series.
“All-in-all, I’m really happy with the way it turned out for our guys,” Stenhouse said. “We got track position, we lost it and we got it back there at the end with that caution, and stayed up there, which was nice. It wasn’t perfect, but we got some good points out of it, got a top-five finish out of it, and we’ll continue to learn what we need to work on with these cars to get better each week.”
Austin Dillon and Jimmie Johnson wrapped up the top-five after running inside of the top-10 throughout the day. The pace was a welcome sight for both drivers after they failed to make the playoffs in 2019.
A couple additional surprised graced the back half of the top-10. Bubba Wallace raced up to sixth for Richard Petty Motorsports, securing his best finish since Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Sept. Brad Keselowski, Harvick and Kyle Larson were predictable top-10 finishers behind Wallace, but Ty Dillon provided one final surprise in 10th. The result was the elder Dillon brother’s first top-10 outside of Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway.
The only thing more shocking than the drivers that made up the top-10 was the manufacturer that missed it. Toyota suffered a rare off-week in Las Vegas, failing to finish higher than Kyle Busch’s 15th-place result.
Busch, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell all started at the back of the field after suffering inspection failures before the race. None among the trio ever found themselves in contention, with Hamlin struggling to stay on the lead-lap early and fading late after a speeding penalty. Bell made one tremendous save, but ultimately crashed out early in 33rd.
Of the Toyota faithful, only Martin Truex Jr. was a true contender on the day. The 2017 Cup champion led 1 lap and contended for a playoff point in Stage 2. But a mistake on a caution-flag pit sequence forced Truex to pit twice to tighten lug nuts after the stage, costing him track position. He never recovered, suffering a flat tire after contact with Kurt Busch in the pack and coming home 20th with damage.
Erik Jones struggled in 23rd, and Daniel Suarez never got a chance to contend in 30th. Suarez’s car stalled out coming to the initial green flag, forcing a Lap 1 caution and costing him multiple laps. The result was particularly deflating given that it marked Gaunt Brothers Racing’s first start with Suarez after the pairing failed to make the Daytona 500.
“Obviously, this is just a learning process,” Suarez said. “We had an issue with the ECU box in the beginning. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, but it put us into a hole and it was difficult to get out of the hole.”
Chastain’s disappointing day
With Ryan Newman out for at least one week, the spring trip to Las Vegas was poised to be a big opportunity for substitute driver Ross Chastain to shine.
But it all fell apart.
Chastain ran as high as fifth during his first race with Roush Fenway Racing and finished 10th at the end of Stage 1. But the later stages of the race saw the Floridian drop in the running order amid myriad issues.
With the laps winding down Chastain was in position to secure a top-15 finish. He entered the final sequence of green-flag pit stops 15th, but dropped to 21st after a poorly-timed caution forced his team to utilize the wave-around. This trapped Chastain in the pack, and he collided with Kurt Busch on the ensuing restart.
That forced Chastain to pit road to repair a tire rub, leaving him trapped a lap down. Things continued to get worse minutes later when he spun, bringing out the final caution flag that fundamentally changed how the race for the win played out. “It just got away from me there and got loose,” he said. “There were a lot of small mistakes on my end, but I learned a ton.”
Chastain avoided issues on the final two-lap sprint at the finish to end his RFR debut in 27th, a result similar to the ones he reached last season with Premium Motorsports and Spire Motorsports.
Afterward, he described the run as “unacceptable.”
“It’s hard to get out of the car after you have a top 10 car and you go and run into people and pick the wrong lanes on restarts and then spin it out at the end,” Chastain said. “That’s pretty silly. Just a lot of mistakes on my end and then at the end just overdriving and for one position to be the first car a lap down, coming to less than 10 laps to go in a Cup race and I spin out in the middle of one and two.”
Other Notes
- A Ford won out in the end, but Sunday was a strong day for Chevrolet in the first ‘normal’ race for the new Camaro body. That left the Bowtie Brigade hopeful leaving Las Vegas. “Last year when we left here, we had quite the opposite feeling and were pretty worried about what the year was going to hold for us,” Johnson said. ‘So, it’s really nice to have that change of perspective now. There’s a lot of Chevy’s up front, one of our Hendrick cars led for a while. So, we’re going the right way.”
- How’s this for a stat? With Blaney and Bowman losing to Logano on pit strategy, every race winner in the Cup Series at Las Vegas has been either a champion or future champion since 2012. The last non-champion to win? Carl Edwards in 2011 – you know, the year he lost the title on a tiebreaker.
- Gauging improvement is more challenging back in the pack, but here’s an example. J.J. Yeley finished 28th for Rick Ware Racing in the No. 52, marking the team’s best run since Indianapolis in Sept. at a track the team finished no better than 35th at last season.
- What could have been for Elliott. He was poised to take over the lead after finals tops, but a broken valve stem on his left-rear tire resulted in a flat and a ruined race in 26th.
