LAS VEGAS, Nev. - William Byron won the most important race of Sunday afternoon — by inches off pit road.
Quick work by Byron’s pit crew enabled the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to beat teammate Kyle Larson off pit road for an overtime restart at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and that was the decisive factor in Byron’s fifth career NASCAR Cup Series victory.
When Aric Almirola spun into the turn 4 wall with four laps left of a scheduled 267, the race turned upside down. Larson held a two-second lead at that point and appeared the almost certain winner.
After NASCAR called the fourth and final caution, Martin Truex, Jr. stayed on the track, with Byron, Larson and most of the other contenders pitting for two tires. Byron’s crew was a fraction of a second faster on the stop, and Byron claimed a front-row starting spot for the overtime to Truex’s outside.
On the first overtime lap, Byron surged past Truex as the cars entered turn 3 at the 1.5-mile track and pulled away to win by.622 seconds over Larson and by .766 seconds over teammate Alex Bowman. It was the third time Hendrick Motorsports had finished 1-2-3 in a Cup Series event.
The drivers accomplished the feat with their fourth driver, Chase Elliott, watching from North Carolina with team owner Rick Hendrick. Elliott broke his left tibia in a snowboarding accident in Colorado on Friday and will miss multiple races as he recovers from surgery.
Josh Berry, substituting for Elliott, finished 29th, two laps down, in his first race in NASCAR’s Next Gen car.
“Yeah, just been really confident about the group of guys that I have on this 24 team,” said Byron, who led 176 of 271 laps, swept the first two stages and won for the first time at Las Vegas. “They work extremely hard, and we spent a lot of time in the offseason just going through running at the sim (simulator) with Chevy and running on iRacing and just trying to get better as a race car driver and as a team.
“Thinking of Chase back home. Wish he was out here with us. He’s a great race car driver, great teammate. Wish he was out here.”
For the overtime restart, Larson chose the inside lane behind Truex and was bottled up behind the No. 19 Toyota. But Larson acknowledged the race was lost on pit road.
“Damn,” Larson said with a laugh. “It’s just part of Cup racing. It seems like kind of laps down, lap by lap, and then, sure enough, the yellow lights come on. You’ve just got to get over that and then try to execute a good pit stop, and I thought I did a really good job getting to my sign, and getting to the commitment line.
“I had a gap to William behind me, and their pit crew must have just done a really good job and got out in front of us, and that gave up the front row. I knew I was in trouble with the 19 staying out. I felt like William was going to get by him.
“Yeah, just a bummer that we didn’t end up the winner, but all in all, William probably had a little bit better car than I had today, and their pit crew executed when they needed to there at the end.”
In the overtime scramble, Bubba Wallace finished fourth and Christopher Bell fifth, both in Toyotas. Austin Cindric, who had been lapped at one point, recovered to run sixth as the top-finishing Ford driver. Truex, Justin Haley, Kevin Harvick and Daniel Suarez completed the top 10.
In a race that featured 13 lead changes among eight drivers, Larson took the top spot in lap 196, after restarting third behind Denny Hamlin and Bowman on lap 190. Larson extended his advantage to nearly five seconds over Byron during an exchange of green-flag pit stops before Almirola’s accident caused the fourth caution on lap 263.
Byron had cut Larson’s lead to two seconds before the accident forced overtime.
The first caution for an on-track incident didn’t occur until lap 183, nine laps after the final stage went green. Pole winner Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch were running three-wide through turn 4 when disaster struck.
With Keselowski in the middle, Logano ran out of room to the outside, and after contact with Keselowski’s car, Logano bounced off the wall and spun into the infield grass.
Logano brought his car to pit road, but his crew couldn’t repair the Ford before the seven-minute time limit ran out under NASCAR’s damaged vehicle policy.
Asked whether Keselowski pinched him into the corner, Logano replied, “Yeah, he did. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do it. It is what it is. What are you going to do, right? We got fenced.”
NASCAR Cup Series
Las Vegas Motor Speedway – Las Vegas, NV
Pennzoil 400 – March 5, 2023
1. (2) William Byron, Chevrolet, 271.
2. (6) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 271.
3. (11) Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 271.
4. (13) Bubba Wallace, Toyota, 271.
5. (10) Christopher Bell, Toyota, 271.
6. (9) Austin Cindric, Ford, 271.
7. (15) Martin Truex, Jr., Toyota, 271.
8. (27) Justin Haley, Chevrolet, 271.
9. (14) Kevin Harvick, Ford, 271.
10. (24) Daniel Suarez, Chevrolet, 271.
11. (12) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 271.
12. (8) Ross Chastain, Chevrolet, 271.
13. (3) Ryan Blaney, Ford, 271.
14. (5) Kyle Busch, Chevrolet, 271.
15. (34) Tyler Reddick, Toyota, 271.
16. (21) Aric Almirola, Ford, 271.
17. (7) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 271.
18. (23) A.J. Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 271.
19. (22) Erik Jones, Chevrolet, Accident, 270.
20. (19) Corey LaJoie, Chevrolet, 270.
21. (18) Chris Buescher, Ford, 270.
22. (4) Ty Gibbs #, Toyota, 270.
23. (31) Ryan Preece, Ford, 270.
24. (16) Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Chevrolet, 270.
25. (17) Michael McDowell, Ford, 270.
26. (35) Harrison Burton, Ford, 269.
27. (26) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 269.
28. (20) Chase Briscoe, Ford, 269.
29. (32) Josh Berry(i), Chevrolet, 269.
30. (25) Noah Gragson #, Chevrolet, 269.
31. (28) Todd Gilliland, Ford, 268.
32. (36) B.J. McLeod, Chevrolet, 266.
33. (29) J.J. Yeley, Ford, 265.
34. (33) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 265.
35. (30) Cody Ware, Ford, 259.
36. (1) Joey Logano, Ford, DVP, 183.
Average Speed of Race Winner: 142.98 mph.
Time of Race: 2 Hrs, 50 Mins, 35 Secs. Margin of Victory: .622 Seconds.
Caution Flags: 4 for 26 laps.
Lead Changes: 13 among 8 drivers.
Lap Leaders: J. Logano 1-9;W. Byron 10-36;B. Keselowski 37;T. Reddick 38-40;W. Byron 41-185;D. Hamlin 186-195;K. Larson 196-220;W. Byron 221;A. Bowman 222-223;B. Keselowski 224-227;K. Larson 228-265;W. Byron 266;M. Truex Jr. 267-269;W. Byron 270-271.
Leaders Summary: (Driver, Times Lead, Laps Led) William Byron 5 times for 176 laps; Kyle Larson 2 times for 63 laps; Denny Hamlin 1 time for 10 laps; Joey Logano 1 time for 9 laps; Brad Keselowski 2 times for 5 laps; Martin Truex Jr. 1 time for 3 laps; Tyler Reddick 1 time for 3 laps; Alex Bowman 1 time for 2 laps.
Stage #1 Top Ten: 24,5,1,20,11,19,48,23,8,6
Stage #2 Top Ten: 24,5,48,19,20,23,1,11,6,4
Playoff Standings: 1. Kyle Busch – 92 (1 Win); 2. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. – 86 (1 Win); 3. William Byron – 85 (1 Win); 4. Ross Chastain – 129; 5. Alex Bowman – 126; 6. Kevin Harvick – 108; 7. Daniel Suarez – 104; 8. Martin Truex, Jr. – 102; 9. Denny Hamlin – 99; 10. Christopher Bell – 94; 11. Joey Logano – 92; 12. Chris Buescher – 90; 13. Brad Keselowski – 87; 14. Kyle Larson – 85; 15. Ryan Blaney – 81; 16. Bubba Wallace – 69.
(i) Ineligible for driver points in this series
