5 is 1st into Championship 4
LAS VEGAS – Win and you’re in.
Kayle Larson did just that Sunday.
Larson, driving the No. 5 Hendrick Cars.com Chevrolet Camaro, won Sunday’s South Point 400 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – the first race of the Round of 8, the second round of the 2023 championships.
The win guarantees Larson a spot in the Championship 4, on Sunday, Nov. 5, at Phoenix Raceway.
Larson swept both stages, the ninth time he’s done that in his career, on the way to his fourth victory of 2023.
Larson led 133 of the race’s 267 laps over the speedway’s 1.5-mile oval, taking control for the final time with 45 laps to go, holding off a valiant charge from Round of 8 foe Christopher Bell.
Bell kept cutting off tenths-of-a-second over those final laps, finishing just a blink of an eye, 0.082-seconds, behind.
“From my vantage point, I thought it was a great race,” said Larson. “At the end, I thought my best bet to hold on the lead for was to go to the middle of the track and hope that Christopher wasn’t going to be able to get around me and thankfully he wasn’t and then kind of looked at my mirror and just had to zig and zag a little bit. He got much closer than I wanted it to but thankfully we were able to adjust and get the win.”
“I was like, gosh, what a nail biter in those last few laps,” said Hendrick Motorsports Vice President Jeff Gordon. “I was sweating that when you saw Bell really working at outside lane and making some great momentum and just didn’t seem like there’s a whole lot Kyle could do other than just stick to his line. So, it’s great day and great to capture this win. Get him to Phoenix for the championship. That’s, that’s huge.”
“Well, I didn’t have quite enough there,” said Bell. “I don’t know what else I could have done. I feel like that was my moment. That was my moment to make the Final Four and didn’t quite capture it, so I just wasn’t good enough but, you know, a great day, great day for sure to get those stage points and a second place finish out of it.”
Playoff racers who were in the original 16 but failed to make it to the Elite 8 – Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, and Ross Chastain – finished third through fifth, respectively.
Round of 8 drivers took the next six spots, with Ryan Blaney finishing sixth, followed by William Byron, Tyler Reddick, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, and Chris Buescher in 11th place.
Blaney suffered a major setback after the race when his car failed the postrace inspection because his left front shocks didn’t meet NASCAR specifications.
That knocked him out of a sixth place finished, moving everyone behind him up one spot – putting Buescher into 10th place.
There are still three spots left in the Championship Four.
With two races remaining in the Round of 8 – Homestead-Miami and Martinsville – Byron, Truex, and Hamlin are currently above the cut line.
In order, Bell, despite his second-place finish Sunday, Reddick, Blaney, and Buescher have their work cut out for them to jump into the final four.
Bell was on the pole for the start of the race with Larson beside him.
Bell’s lead lasted two laps before Larson was able to drive past him.
From there, the two traded the lead four times before Larson took it back on lap 73 of the 80-lap first stage, racing to the stage win by a half-second over Bell.
The between stage pit stops scrambled the field, putting Truex, who only took two tires during the pit stop, into the lead with several other racers who also took two tires behind and shuffling Bell and Larson, who took four fresh Goodyear tires, back to seventh and eighth place, respectively.
Hamlin quickly moved past Truex and then Keselowski took control for 38 laps.
But both Larson and Bell were never too far behind.
Larson was back in control with 10 laps left in Stage 2 and won that stage ahead of Chastain and Bell.
Bell took the lead to start a caution-free Stage 3 and held until Larson moved in front with 45 to go to win his spot in the Championship 4.
There were seven caution flags in Sunday’s race – five for on-track incidents and the other two for stage breaks, but there were no major crashes or pileups.
The five incidents all involved cars that blew out right-rear tires.
Two of them – Carson Hocevar on lap 110, and Alex Bowman on lap 144 – knocked those drives out of the race.
The Round of 8 continues next weekend at Homestead-Miami Raceway before moving on to Martinsville where the Championship 4 field will be set.
