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Las Vegas Watercooler Recap
A week after watching a late lead disappear at Kansas, Chase Briscoe got another chance with Kyle Larson filling his mirror.
This time, he finished the job.
Briscoe swept both stages, led a race-high 175 of 267 laps and won Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his second victory of the season. The final margin over Larson was 1.376 seconds, but that hardly tells the story of how close the finish became.
Briscoe controlled much of the afternoon and took the lead for good on Lap 228, but lapped traffic allowed Larson and Tyler Reddick to close during the final run. Crew chief James Small compared watching Larson approach to “Jaws coming” once the No. 5 moved to the outside lane. With a lap remaining, Larson had cut the gap to less than four-tenths of a second. He pushed hard through Turns 3 and 4 trying to build one final run, got loose and slapped the wall. Reddick made contact with Larson and slid through the grass before all three maintained their positions: Briscoe first, Larson second and Reddick third.
For Briscoe, the win carried a little extra satisfaction after Larson chased him down late at Kansas one week earlier. “I don’t think I’d be able to get on the plane if I didn’t win,” Briscoe joked afterward. Las Vegas was about as complete of an afternoon as the No. 19 team could ask for. Two stage wins, 175 laps led and a 75-point day moved Briscoe two positions forward in the championship standings. Small said the formula over the final five races is fairly straightforward.
“Keep winning. Pretty simple.” While Briscoe nearly maximized everything available, Larson’s runner-up finish may have been the more telling championship performance.
The No. 5 was badly off on the opening run, and a lengthy planned adjustment during the first pit cycle sent Larson back onto the track a lap down. A later caution allowed him to take the wave-around, and from there the afternoon became a slow climb back toward the front. “My car got better, but track position was so difficult,” Larson said. “We just kind of chipped away at it all race long.”
Larson scored only one stage point through the first two stages, but a strong green-flag pit cycle helped put him back into contention. He eventually climbed to second and began cutting into Briscoe’s advantage before simply running out of tire and almost running out of race car on the final lap.
It was the kind of recovery that has drawn comparisons to the championship years of Jimmie Johnson: take a day that looks like it could become damaging, keep working on it and somehow leave with more than anyone expected.
Even Small acknowledged what Larson and the Hendrick Motorsports team had done.
“They just show what a quality team they are,” Small said. “They never stop fighting.”
The contrast with Denny Hamlin was difficult to miss. Hamlin started from the pole, led 39 laps early and appeared positioned to capitalize while Larson struggled. Instead, Hamlin spun while running fourth late in Stage 1 after getting into the marbles, damaged the No. 11 and came away with zero stage points. Another setback around the Stage 3 restart left him fighting simply to salvage the afternoon. Hamlin finished 16th and now trails Larson by 40 points with five races remaining. “Today certainly didn’t live up to what we expected,” Hamlin said.
Christopher Bell also saw a promising afternoon unravel after losing power steering during the second half of the race. Bell led eight laps before finishing 23rd, one lap down, and now sits 55 points behind Larson. Meanwhile, Larson left Las Vegas looking at both sides of the equation. He turned a lap-down afternoon into a runner-up finish and stretched his championship advantage, yet immediately focused on the points still left on the table. “I’m plus 40, but I also look at it like, dang, if we could have just fired off more in the ballpark, we could have had another 10 points minimum.”
That may be the bigger warning for everyone chasing him.
Briscoe delivered the perfect response to Kansas and proved he isn’t going away quietly. But on an afternoon when Larson looked vulnerable, he still found a way to finish second and strengthen his grip on the championship.
Five races remain.
And if Las Vegas was any indication, nobody can afford to leave many opportunities behind.
William Lynch
Founder & Editor, Turn 3 Media
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