For most of Sunday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the script seemed fairly straightforward. The mighty Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut would do what it usually does — arrive, unload speed like it’s coming out of a slot machine, and politely inform the rest of the NASCAR garage that they were racing for second.
Except Hendrick Motorsports had other ideas.
Early on, it was Kyle Larson who looked like the man most likely to crash the Gibbs party. A three-time Vegas winner who treats this place like his personal high-speed living room, Larson grabbed control early in Stage 2 with the sort of authority that suggests he’s done this before. Which, of course, he has.
But then along came his teammate William Byron, the 2023 spring race winner, who calmly snatched the spotlight and the Stage win like someone reaching across the table to take the last French fry.
By the time the race wound into its closing laps, the fight for supremacy had distilled itself into a heavyweight bout between Larson, Byron, Christopher Bell, and Denny Hamlin. Four drivers. Four very fast race cars. One track that doesn’t particularly care about anyone’s feelings.
Then came the final 50 laps.
Hamlin took command, and just when it looked like the race might settle into a comfortable cruise for the veteran, a rather inconvenient problem appeared in his mirrors. Chase Elliott — a driver who, in the Gen 7 era, had never won at Las Vegas and hadn’t even led a lap — suddenly began closing the gap with the slow, steady menace of a tax bill.
Lap by lap, Elliott reeled him in. The gap shrank. The tension grew. Somewhere, crew chiefs began nervously chewing through entire packs of gum.
In the end, Hamlin held on, winning by a mere .502 of a second. Elliott, meanwhile, climbed from his car wearing the expression of a man who both nearly stole the jackpot and is slightly pleased he even got close enough to see it.
“It (the No. 9 Chevrolet) was definitely better there towards the end than we had started the run,” said Elliott. “I thought there might be an opportunity. I knew that he was starting to get tight there at the end of runs.
“Yeah, man, as bummed as I am to come up that close to a win, I have to kind of bring myself back to a reality check, how much better we ran today than we’ve been running. I’m balancing that, right?
“Obviously, these things are hard to win. We had a great opportunity to do it. But really proud of the effort throughout the week, preparation, yesterday. Just kind of fighting through a not-so-good day. Getting up there in the mix with the guys that win a lot of these races anymore. Really proud of that.”
Byron, who led 31 laps, brought his car home third and sounded like a man relieved to be back in familiar territory — namely, the sharp end of the field.
“This is a good run for us,” Byron said. “The Raptor Chevrolet team was really good today. I just feel like this is more what we’re accustomed to. Proud to see that effort, everyone back at the shop working hard on the new body, kind of getting everything dialed in.
Hopefully we can put more runs together like this and keep stringing them up.”
Larson led 62 laps — second only to Hamlin’s race-high 134 — but faded to seventh after battling a race car that seemed to change personalities more often than a reality TV contestant.
“In the second stage, we were getting really loose,” he said. “And then to start the final stage, I just didn’t get the launch I needed or the push I needed. I was side-by-side with them and then (Christopher) Bell had a big run behind me and it was going to be hard to block. They got by and I fell back to fourth, and then my balance was just kind of tight that run. I was hoping to get to a green flag stop, that way we could be in traffic and maybe my balance would be in a good spot and we would have a shot to race for the win. We had that caution just before the cycle was about to start. On the next run, I was just really loose, and I was just kind of hanging on.
Overall, it was good to get another top-10 finish for this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team. I wish we would have had the balance in a little better place, but it was back and forth every run. All-in-all, it was a good day and I’m happy with it. Chase (Elliott) did an awesome job and William (Byron) was really fast. We had our moments of being fast, so we can look at it and keep building on it.”
For Hendrick Motorsports, it wasn’t a win. But it was something almost as valuable — proof that the Gibbs empire can, in fact, be rattled. And sometimes, in NASCAR, that’s the first step toward knocking the whole thing over.
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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