What a difference a week makes. Seven days after Chase Briscoe watched Kyle Larson snatch victory away from him at Kansas Speedway, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver returned the favor in Las Vegas. This time, Briscoe got to celebrate, Larson got to explain what went wrong, and the two put on a late-race show that made the final laps worth the price of admission.
Briscoe dominated Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, sweeping both stages and leading the most laps on his way to his seventh career victory and second of 2026. But the afternoon was anything but straightforward, and for a while, it looked as though Larson might pull off another one of those irritatingly impressive Houdini acts that make him such a nightmare for the competition.
The reigning Cup Series champion spent much of the race looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. His Chevrolet struggled badly, he lost a lap during an early green-flag pit cycle, and at one point he was buried outside the top 20. But his crew kept working, chipping away at the car until Larson finally had something resembling a competitive machine beneath him.
By the closing laps, he was hunting down Briscoe, who had looked almost untouchable for much of the afternoon. Larson got close enough to make things interesting, and Briscoe suddenly had to spend less time looking through the windshield and more time checking his mirrors.
“Honestly, more of the windshield, except for when Larson would get really, really close,” Briscoe said afterward. “The aero is such a big deal. On 1 and 2 I felt like if I could somewhat cover where he was at, it was a huge guessing game.”
Briscoe knew he needed to get the final corner right. He said he focused on hitting the bottom and slowing the car down, something he admitted wasn’t normally his strongest suit, to make it difficult for Larson to get alongside him.
It worked, although not without a final-lap scare.
Coming out of Turn 4, Larson got loose, smacked the outside wall and slid down into Tyler Reddick, who was fighting for second place. Reddick’s Toyota was sent sideways across the frontstretch grass, producing a finish that looked less like a carefully choreographed NASCAR race and more like a pair of shopping carts colliding in a supermarket parking lot.
Larson managed to keep his damaged Chevrolet pointed in roughly the right direction and crossed the line 1.3 seconds behind Briscoe. Reddick somehow gathered up his Toyota and finished third, 3.2 seconds behind the winner.
Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney completed the top five.
For Briscoe, the victory was a welcome reversal of fortune after last week’s painful defeat at Kansas, where Larson had beaten him in the closing laps.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Briscoe said when asked if the Las Vegas victory made up for Kansas. “Not really. We could have had another win, but yeah, I wouldn’t have—I don’t think I would have been able to get on the plane. They would have all kicked my butt.”
There was apparently some concern among the Joe Gibbs Racing camp that Briscoe might not survive another flight home without hearing about the Kansas finish. He admitted he was “scared to death” to face his team if he failed to deliver in Las Vegas.
Instead, he gave them a day to remember.
Briscoe thanked the fans who braved the heat, his sponsors and team partners, and took a moment to acknowledge his family. He also sent birthday wishes to Brooks, whose twin birthday celebration was coming up that weekend, and a message to his grandfather, who had been taken to the hospital earlier in the day.
It was an emotional end to a race that Briscoe had controlled for long stretches, but the real story was how Larson managed to turn a miserable afternoon into a genuine shot at victory.
Larson started fifth but struggled almost immediately. He couldn’t make meaningful progress, fell back through the field and then lost a lap during green-flag pit stops after a lengthy stop while the crew made wholesale changes. A subsequent caution allowed him to take a wave-around and get back on the lead lap, but he finished Stage 1 in 24th.
The recovery began to take shape late in Stage 2.
As green-flag pit stops unfolded, a group of four drivers stayed out, including Larson and Cindric. Briscoe, running on fresher tires, reeled in Cindric and took the stage lead with three laps remaining. Cindric finished second, while Larson salvaged 10th.
That strategy put Larson on a better pit cycle with the leaders and gave his team an opportunity to keep working on the car. He started the final stage inside the top 10, and from there, the climb toward the front became increasingly convincing.
“Yeah, I’ll just start from the beginning,” Larson said. “It was a fight. I was surprised how far off we were that first run. I was just doing all I could to hang on and get to the pit stop.”
The initial adjustments took longer than he expected, and the lost lap left him with a mountain to climb. The caution and wave-around proved crucial, allowing him to rejoin the fight rather than spend the afternoon stranded behind the leaders.
“My car got better, but track position was so difficult,” Larson said. “Just kind of chipped away at it all race long.”
By the time he caught Briscoe, Larson felt he had a chance. His tires, however, were beginning to give up the ghost, and he had to make his move count.
He tried to build momentum through Turns 3 and 4, hoping to get close enough to make a pass down the frontstretch. Instead, the car got loose, Larson overcorrected and found the wall.
“I was just trying to push hard through three and four to just build some momentum at him to, I don’t know, try to get by down the straightaway,” Larson said. “Yeah, just got really loose and overcorrected in the wall.”
Larson was understandably disappointed not to win, particularly given the special paint scheme his team was running in honor of Kyle Busch. He noted that winning in it would have been very much in Busch’s style.
Still, second place was a remarkable result considering where he started the afternoon. It also strengthened his grip on the championship standings. Larson arrived in Las Vegas with a 26-point lead over Denny Hamlin and left with a 40-point advantage.
Hamlin, meanwhile, had an afternoon that went from promising to thoroughly miserable.
The pole winner led the opening 34 laps and cycled back into the lead after the first round of green-flag stops. When Zane Smith spun harmlessly on Lap 45 to bring out the first caution, Hamlin’s crew elected to take two tires while most of the field stayed out. Briscoe inherited the lead, and Hamlin restarted ninth.
With fresher tires, Hamlin began working his way forward and had climbed into the top five when things went sideways. With two laps remaining in Stage 1, he got loose and spun. He avoided the wall, but the damage was enough to ruin his afternoon.
Hamlin finished the stage 27th and never really recovered. He eventually came home 16th, a long way from the front-row celebrations he’d enjoyed the day before.
Briscoe, by contrast, kept delivering. He led the field through the early stages, managed the pit cycles and stayed out of trouble while others struggled with tire wear, mechanical problems and the occasional loss of contact with reality.
Reddick had his own collection of headaches. An alternator issue hampered the 23XI Racing driver early, and an early pit stop at the end of Stage 1 earned him a penalty. But he fought his way back into contention, only to lose ground during a slow pit stop that allowed Larson and William Byron to get ahead of him.
Even after the final-lap contact, Reddick was able to bring the Toyota home third.
Unfortunately, finishing on the podium did little to disguise his frustration with another race in which his team had to overcome problems.
“Man, I don’t know. It’s just still, yeah, we gained five points. Whoop-de-doo,” Reddick said when asked about the significance of the result after a difficult run of races. “We have to capitalize when we have Toyota Camrys as fast as this. We have to win those races.”
Reddick added that clean execution had become a problem, and the team needed to do a better job of converting its speed into victories.
Christopher Bell, who finished third in Stage 2 despite reporting that he was losing power steering, struggled home in 23rd. William Byron finished sixth, Chase Elliott seventh, and Bubba Wallace and Joey Logano rounded out the top 10.
Among the remaining championship contenders, Carson Hocevar, Chris Buescher and Daniel Suarez finished 12th through 14th, Ty Gibbs was 17th, and Ryan Preece finished 28th, two laps down.
The Cup Series now heads to Charlotte Motor Speedway, where NASCAR will return to the 1.5-mile oval for the first time since 2017. After a Las Vegas race that delivered strategy, mechanical headaches and a final-lap scrap worthy of a demolition derby, the next stop promises another test of speed and survival.
For Briscoe, at least, the flight home should be considerably more comfortable this week.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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