Larson Wins At Vegas, Grabs First Win Of The Season (3-3-24)
By: Becca Cottingham Quimby
All Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
We head for our West Coast swing to Las Vegas Speedway. With a new right-side tire, this should make for a very interesting race. We see tire issues quickly with Christopher Bell. He has a right tire explode and brings out the first caution within the first ten laps. We see everyone make a trip down pit road. The restart was where we saw a great restart by William Byron. He was able to get from the middle of the top ten to the leader in one lap. Then a wheel comes off Christopher Buscher along with a hard hit into a wall. This ends up needing the safety crew to repair the safer barrier wall. To do so they had to red flag the race. They had to go back to see what happened to cause the tire to come off. When they reviewed the footage from the pit earlier they did not get the single lug nut tight. This will ultimately be a penalty for the team. Plus it sadly ended his day. They get back to racing and William Byron picks up some major debris with what looks like a black trash bag. While his teammate Kyle Larson battles with Kyle Busch for the lead. We come to the end of stage one and Kyle Larson takes the lead and wins stage one.
We come into stage two racing we have a mix-up where everyone comes for fuel and tires. We have seen already how someone from the middle of the top ten can easily make it back up front. That is exactly what Kyle Larson does. He gets up front and starts putting drivers down a lap. It looked like it was going to be a very quiet stage until Christopher Bell spun out with around nine laps to go. We get back to racing with four laps to go with five wide for a moment. There is a lot of blocking all over the track. Kyle Larson and teammate Alex Bowman battle for just a moment on two tires. Kyle Larson gets around Alex fairly decently.
We start stage three and if it is anything like stage one or two we may see an issue or two. Overall, it will probably be a lot of green flag racing with green flag pit stops. Depending on the team’s strategy either in thirds or in half. Kyle Larson gets back to the front and pulls away. Tyler Reddick makes his way back up to the front right behind him. We do see the drivers split the stage. Tyler Reddick tries to leapfrog Kyle Larson but they have a slow stop on pit road. So when the green flag pit stops cycled back out Kyle Larson took the lead back. A caution does fly as Corey Lajoie spins out and blows a tire. This will send a decent shootout to the end. Tyler Reddick and Kyle Larson pull themselves apart as the top two contentions for the race. Tyler Reddick is in second and is trying to figure out where he can go to make up the most ground. While the finish did not come down as close Atlanta’s Kyle Larson will sweep the stages closely followed by Tyler Reddick.
