(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
*Writer not present at the track this week. Observations are from afar.
Who Won?
Kyle Busch. The veteran overcame his poor history at his home track to secure win No. 197 in NASCAR national series competition
Who Claimed the Stages?
Cole Custer and Tyler Reddick.
Top Stories
A challenge from the young guns
A simple glance at the final results from the Boyd Gaming 300 could lead the casual fan to believe it was a standard Kyle Busch-dominated affair. The Nevadan had led 98 of the race’s 213 laps, and he held the lead through two late restarts to guarantee himself a second win on the weekend.
But anyone that watched the race would tell you there was much more to Saturday’s race than meets the eye.
Busch did hold on to score his first Xfinity Series win of the year, but the result didn’t come without a fight. The 2015 Cup Series champion was forced to recover from an early tire issue to contend for the win, and after he got the lead Busch had to endure a fierce challenge from two of NASCAR’s brightest upcoming stars.
The first was Rowdy’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Christopher Bell. Searching for his second-consecutive win, Bell hounded Busch over a lengthy green-flag run in the race’s second half. The Oklahoman steadily marched toward Busch’s No. 18 Toyota, stalked him for a handful of laps and even briefly took the lead with a strong move on Lap 181.
Bell was in position for a statement victory, but it wasn’t meant to be. The series sophomore got into the outside wall shortly after the overtake, allowing Busch to storm back to the lead one lap after he’d lost it.
“Whenever I was running down Kyle (Busch), I was really, really loose,” Bell said. “And then as soon as I got in front of him, I went into turn three and I just got tight and hit the wall.”
Bell wanted to regroup and go after Busch, but he was met with another challenge in third-place runner Tyler Reddick.
Continuing a trend from the previous week at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Reddick showed strong speed on the long run in his No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. The defending series champion struggled to pass the lead JGR duo, but he held pace with them throughout the second half of the race – even as fourth-place Cole Custer dropped more than 23 seconds back.
When Bell made his mistake, it allowed Reddick to challenge him for second. The pair fought and made contact, allowing Busch to drive off as they tried to regroup.
Just as they were starting to reel the savvy veteran back in, a caution flew for a spinning Jairo Avila Jr..
The crash led to a final round of pit stops with less than 10 to go, but the three pit crews all held their form to allow the trio to restart in the top three positions. Bell was the first to get a look at Busch on a Lap 199 restart, but he couldn’t get a good enough run to clear him in Turns 1 & 2.
Reddick was right behind Bell. When he saw him go up next to Busch off the turn, the Californian took advantage and dove under the second-year star to take the leaders three-wide. Busch drove off, but Reddick was able to take second.
Then came another caution.
Searching for his first win with RCR, Reddick fired off strong alongside Busch on the ensuing restart. He held tight next to Busch through the first set of turns, nearly cleared the veteran on the backstretch and carried max speed into Turn 3 in search of a race-winning pass.
But the move proved to be too much. With Busch on his right-rear quarter panel, Reddick got loose, washed up the track and spun out. Bell collided with him, taking both drivers out of the race.
A day that saw two of the Xfinity Series’ best stars challenge the tour’s all-time wins leader ended with both drivers making a trip to the infield care center.
“No regrets on my end. It is what it is,” Reddick told NASCAR.com. “In the closing laps, you know it’s going to happen. People are going to go for the win, and we were in a spot where I think we could’ve gotten it. It didn’t go our way. Kyle did what he had to do and he won the race. Hat’s off to him.”
Bell was disappointed in the end result, but proud of his effort against one of the sport’s best drivers.
“That was fun and I’m a big believer that you have good races and bad races,” Bell said. “We didn’t finish good, but I felt like that was a really good race for me. I felt like I drove really nice. Just needed to do a little bit better job on restarts. Pretty much all race long I struggled on restarts. Just have to work on that a little bit and hopefully we’ll be able to win a couple more.”
At race’s end Busch found himself making the usual trip to victory lane, while Bell and Reddick had to settle for finishes of 13th and 14th, respectively.
The pair hadn’t gotten the results they’d wanted. But they were both left with memories of a fun battle that will last a lifetime.
I know I had fun! https://t.co/ebWYCWn9AD
— Tyler Reddick (@TylerReddick) March 3, 2019
Searching for a hometown sweep
By going to victory lane on Saturday, Kyle Busch positioned himself with a chance to do something no driver has ever done at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Sweep the weekend with wins in all three NASCAR national tours.
Busch has more knowledge about weekend sweeps than anyone else in the Cup Series garage, having gotten the broom out on two separate occasions at Bristol Motor Speedway. But while a trio of wins at the ‘Last Great Coliseum’ makes for an impressive accomplishment, earning a sweep in Vegas would bring the veteran a different kind of memory.
Because Las Vegas isn’t just another track or area to Busch.
It’s home.
“To do it here in Las Vegas at my hometown track would be huge,” Busch said. “It would be right up there with the other two being able to accomplish it and with this new aero package and being at a 1.5-mile track. I have won about everywhere, but Bristol is my absolutely one of my favorites and Vegas is not so much one of my favorites. It would be nice to come out here with that win.”
The 2015 champion earned a chance to make Las Vegas history on Friday and Saturday, storming off to a pair of wins in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series and Xfinity Series. The Truck Series win came with relative ease, but Saturday’s victory proved to be a fierce challenge.
“I thought this would be the toughest of the three,” Busch said of the races. “We had a fast race car, but we could never get the balance even in the race right there. I was either way too tight or way too loose, I could never find a happy medium.”
Busch was right to assume Saturday’s race would prove difficult. With a rookie crew chief in Ben Beshore and a different spotter watching from above, the veteran had to deal with a lack of familiarity compared to most years. He also spotted the field a lap early on, encountering a loose wheel that forced him to pit road before he could even complete a full fuel run.
Having such an unexpected issue left Busch frustrated for the opening stretch of the race.
“The wheels have been torqued, they’ve been through the tech line and it just doesn’t register in my brain that something like that can happen,” he admitted. “Certainly there’s going to be some frustration out of that. It wasn’t anything malicious, they didn’t forget to do it, they said they torqued them twice so I don’t know why it came loose.”
It would take the No. 18 pit crew’s effort and a bit of luck, but Busch ultimately bounced back. He took the wave around after Stage 1, and a caution early in Stage 2 allowed the 33-year-old to rejoin the lead lap. From there he began a steady march to the front of the field.
On Lap 112, Busch finally made it to the lead. From there he imposed his will, surviving multiple attempts at the lead to pace 98 of the final 102 laps. The checkered flag brought win No. 93 in the Xfinity Series, and provided Busch an opportunity to complete his third-career triple-header weekend sweep on Sunday.
Accomplishing the feat won’t be easy. Busch only has one Cup Series win at Las Vegas, and the debuting draft-heavy rules package has every driver in the field uncertain of what to expect from Sunday’s 400-mile feature.
But Busch has proven to be one of the most consistent in the garage regardless of the rules package, car or series. So he figures to be among the contenders on Sunday afternoon.
“Overall, I feel like the Cup car is pretty good,” Busch said. “The M&M’s Chocolate Bar Camry’s got some speed to it as well and we ran a lot out there in traffic and the pack. So, it will be interesting tomorrow.”
Other Notes
- Lost in Busch’s sweep opportunity and the strong runs of Reddick and Bell was a statement drive from John Hunter Nemechek. It’s easy to forget now given the events of the offseason, but last fall’s trip to Las Vegas saw Nemechek’s talent questioned after Ross Chastain drove the No. 42 Nemechek was running part-time to a victory in Sin City. In the tour’s return, Nemechek drove a smart race and had a late chance to win before settling for second to Busch as the checkered flag flew.
- It’s still too early to tell if he’ll be able to stay competitive all year, but surprise Daytona International Speedway winner Michael Annett added some legitimacy to his early playoff berth with a strong top-five run on Saturday. His two top-fives in three 2019 starts is already more than Annett managed in his first two full seasons with JR Motorsports.
- It’s no surprise that early winners Michael Annett and Christopher Bell have the two lowest average finish marks through three races at 6.0 and 6.7. But behind them in third is a driver most wouldn’t have expected – Ryan Sieg. The underdog has proven to be consistent through the early stretch of the season, notching two top-10s and an average finish of 7.0 through three races to sit eighth in the championship standings.
- John Hunter Nemechek and third-place finisher Noah Gragson each scored their best finishes to date for their new teams after finding success in part time runs elsewhere in 2018. It wasn’t their best results ever, though. Nemechek won a race during his time with Chip Ganassi Racing, while Gragson finished second with Joe Gibbs Racing.
- Josh Williams didn’t change rides, but he did score a new career-best finish after bringing the underfunded DGM Racing a 16th-place result in Sin City.
- Saturday’s blown motor brought an unexpected end to a streak of consistency for Justin Allgaier. Prior to Saturday’s quick exit the Illinoisan had completed all but one possible lap in nine starts at Las Vegas, scoring eight top-10s with a best finish of second last season.
- Brandon Jones entered the final stage of the Boyd Gaming 300 with a chance to emerge as the series points leader, but he left Las Vegas lucky to be unhurt after suffering one of the hardest crashes in recent memory. Jones was attempting to block Cole Custer when contact sent the Georgian into the outside wall at a sharp angle, destroying the front of his car and forcing a lengthy caution just before the end of the race.
- Kyle Busch’s win came from eighth after qualifying was rained out. That might not seem like much, but it’s the furthest back an Xfinity Series winner has risen from since Mark Martin’s win from 17th in 2008.
