Track: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Track length: 1.5 miles
When: Sunday, 3:30 p.m. ET
Where to tune in: FS1, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Race purse: $11,055,250
Race distance: 267 laps | 400 miles
Stages: 80 | 165 | 267
Defending winner: Kyle Larson, March 2024
Starting lineup: Michael McDowell wins Busch Light Pole
Bringing a good poker face to Las Vegas
While Christopher Bell hopes a four-of-a-kind is in the cards this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the return to the first 1.5-mile track of 2025 signifies a world of opportunity for others to lay down a strong hand.
Gambling puns aside, the first intermediate race of the season will unveil which teams maintained their edge on the high-speed ovals over the offseason, which fell behind and which improved by leaps and bounds since last fall.
“It’s really important,” 2023 Cup champion Ryan Blaney said. “There’s a lot of things you can take away from here that kind of go into other mile-and-a-halves. Maybe not so much comparing here to Homestead next week, but this place really helps you for Charlotte and Texas and things like that and Kansas a little bit. So yeah, it’s really important just to see where you’re at, right? What improvements have you made over the offseason? What improvements have your competitors made in the offseason? See where you stack up.”
MORE: Cup standings | Full 2025 schedule
Bell has as good a shot as ever to score his first career Vegas win, which would also mark his fourth straight win in the NASCAR Cup Series — something nobody has done since Jimmie Johnson in 2007. The red-hot driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has finished runner-up twice at the Nevada race track in his past three Vegas starts. But now, in his sixth full-time Cup Series season, he knows nothing is guaranteed Sunday.
Bell will have to deal with adversity Sunday as the No. 20 team swapped a throttle body after qualifying and will drop to the rear of the field before the green flag.
“One thing’s for sure: Nothing that has happened the last three weeks means anything for this week,” Bell said Friday. “Everything is still ahead of me, and nothing is set, and we have to go out there and perform as soon as the green flag draws in practice. We have to qualify well, and we have to execute the race. I am optimistic about how we’re going to perform because this has been a strong track for us in the past. But I’m just trying very hard to not get ahead of myself and understand that it’s a new week, it’s another race, and everybody is going to be bringing their best stuff and trying to beat me.”
RELATED: Full Saturday recap
One of those other competitors will be Joey Logano, the most recent race winner at Las Vegas, who used an alternate fuel strategy to stave off a hard-charging Bell in October. Logano used that victory to propel him into the Championship 4 and eventually score the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship, the third of Logano’s career.
In one sense, the No. 22 Team Penske group has begun its title defense well by leading a series-best 207 laps through four races. The other side of that proverbial coin, however, shows the reality of his results: According to Racing Insights, Logano is the first defending champion to fail to score a top 10 within the first four races of the following season — and his 207 laps led are the most ever through four races without a top-10 result in that stretch.
“Frustrating, I guess is probably the one word that comes to mind,” Logano said Saturday. “I think I’ve left the race track every single weekend mad at something, which is just part of racing sometimes. But you’ve gotta also move on quickly, and you’ve also got to look at what have you done well. And as a team, we’ve done great at leading laps. We’ve been towards the front. We’re tied for seventh and points, which shows that we’ve scored a lot of stage points.
“So even though the finishes aren’t there, we’ve been able to run up front enough to score to stage points and to be able to be in contention, leading the laps. So there’s some positives there. It’s not like we’re just slow. It’s just that something has happened every race so far. So that part’s frustrating in a way because it also feels like you’re not taking full advantage of the opportunity that’s ahead of you because you’ve had fast race cars and you really haven’t been able to convert.”
From atop the pit box …
What do crew chiefs have in focus to win Sunday’s race?
Though it is a standard 1.5-mile oval in size, Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s nuances make it an enjoyable challenge for the crew chiefs attempting to tackle its progressive banking and aggressive mid-corner bumps.
Cliff Daniels, the defending winning crew chief of the Vegas spring race with driver Kyle Larson, lit up in the Vegas garage Saturday, describing the unique complexities of the desert gem.
“This track offers really everything you can imagine, which honestly it’s why we love coming here,” Daniels told NASCAR.com. “You know, the on-track stuff is a bit trade-off of (lift) over (drag). It’s fun and exciting just in how you have your car configured. Mechanical grip is a big deal. The track is bumpy, so you’ve got to ride the bumps as well. You’ve got to be able to move around, run high, run low. And then you’ve got to know how to execute your day, and a lot of that happens on pit road.”
Part of that process involves selecting the right pit stall. The concrete stalls at Las Vegas are notoriously slick — so much so that the first pit stall isn’t always the most preferable. After winning the pole in October, Christopher Bell’s crew chief, Adam Stevens, selected pit stall No. 6 because of the delay triggered by the lack of traction.
RELATED: See where drivers will pit for Sunday’s race | Watch NASCAR video highlights
“There’s a lot of really slick pit stalls here where you can’t get a lot of grip leaving,” Daniels said. “If you have a good pit stop, you can just have a hard time getting going out of your pit stall and lose spots that way.”
As No. 22 Team Penske crew chief Paul Wolfe proved in October, an alternative fuel plan can also pay significant dividends if cautions fall a certain way. Those options must be considered in race preparation.
“The way the race plays out sometimes really does offer gambles on fuel mileage,” Daniels said, “or even with tire selection, whether you take four, take rights, whatever the case may be. So it’s enjoyable and it’s a lot of fun from our seat and all those factors you have to take in.”
Another wrench to factor is that Goodyear brought a new left-side tire code to Las Vegas this weekend, a change made in hopes of more tire wear and lap-time fall-off, according to a Goodyear press release. Teams do have experience with this tire setup, however, at the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval, Darlington Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2024.
“Generally speaking, the track surface at Las Vegas does not produce a lot of tire wear on its own,” Stu Grant, Goodyear’s general manager of global race tires, said in a release. “We have worked over the past several seasons at designing our tires to wear more, and we have made a change to the left side for this weekend’s Cup race to do just that. Wear is an important part of racing in that it allows the tires to run ‘cooler’ and produce more fall-off over the course of a run.”
Jonathan Hassler, crew chief for Blaney, believes that will play a role in Sunday’s outcome.
“I think the biggest thing here (is) you don’t have a lot of tires in the race, but tires are certainly advantageous,” Hassler told NASCAR.com. “So just managing the sets that you have in the race. At times, you have to actually use your scuffed tires here. Some places, we have a big enough allotment where we don’t have to do that. But this place is one of the ones where you really have to manage the whole budget.”
History tells us …
Stick around for the finish. According to Racing Insights, four of the last six Cup Series races at Las Vegas have had a pass for the lead within the final six laps.
He may not be the favorite to win, but watch out for …
ROSS CHASTAIN. Yes, his name appeared here one week ago at Phoenix as well, but Chastain’s numbers at Las Vegas are too good to ignore. He has yet to win in Sin City, but the Trackhouse No. 1 car has finished seventh or better in five of the last six Vegas races — the one anomaly being a 12th-place showing in 2023. Chastain’s 5.5 average finish in that span is also the best of all drivers, according to Racing Insights.
Fantasy update
Las Vegas is known for green-flag runs, and seeing that all six of my picks from earlier in the week cracked the top nine in 10-lap averages, there are no changes this weekend. Chastain set a blistering pace on the long run. One driver to keep an eye on is Bubba Wallace, who believes the No. 23 team has some of its mojo back from pre-2024 on intermediate tracks. Team Penske also had a strong showing in qualifying, putting three of its cars inside the top 10 (including Josh Berry for Wood Brothers Racing).
Lineup: Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick, Ross Chastain, Kyle Busch
Garage: Alex Bowman
(Dustin Albino)
RELATED: More deep dives in Fantasy Fastlane
Speed reads
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• Racing Insights: Full finishing order projections for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 | Read more
• Blaney crashes in Vegas practice: No. 12 team repairs car after flat tire causes spin, wall contact | Read more
• Bell, Nemechek to drop to rear Sunday: Toyota teams swap throttle bodies after qualifying | Read more
• No. 54 team looks to turn results around: In midst of poor results, team believes Ty Gibbs is ready to rebound | Read more
• Larson seeking Las Vegas luster: No. 5 team striving for more speed in 2025 start | Read more
• Busch on grit, determination of No. 8 team: Two-time Cup champ on hot start, Vegas expectations | Read more
• Turning Point en route to Vegas: Who can stop Bell, and who should be worried after four races | Read more
• NASCAR Classics: Rewind the tape on past Cup races at Las Vegas | Watch races
• Paint Scheme Preview: Glitz and glam for the Las Vegas scenes | View gallery