A valiant effort by Kyle Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team ended with a runner-up finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to open the NASCAR Cup Series Round of Eight. The finish \u2013 Larson\u2019s 13th top-five result of the season \u2013 came with a strong points day that puts the 2021 champion in the top provisional points positions in the playoff rankings with a 35-point cushion heading to Talladega Superspeedway.<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Kyle Larson led a lineup of three Team Chevy drivers with top-10 results at the 1.5-mile Nevada oval, with Alex Bowman crossing the line in seventh and the Las Vegas native, Kyle Busch, driving from the 32nd starting position to a strong eighth-place finish.<\/p>\n
\u00b7 To get the NASCAR Cup Series Round of Eight underway, all three Team Chevy playoff contenders unloaded with speed that translated into top-six qualifying efforts \u2013 led by Chase Elliott, who lined up his No. 9 Chevrolet in the fourth position to take the green-flag at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Settling into the fourth position on the opening lap, Elliott was quickly challenged for position by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron, who also earned a top-five starting position. With an early report of a good handling Chevrolet, Byron steadily made his way up into the runner-up position by Lap 29. The first green-flag pit cycle began shortly thereafter, with Crew Chief, Rudy Fugle, calling his driver down pit road for four tires and fuel on Lap 34. With a masterful 9.6-second stop by the No. 24 pit crew, Byron took advantage of a pit road mishap by then-race leader, Chase Briscoe, to inherit the lead once the pit cycle was complete. Byron\u2019s long run speed prevailed as the Charlotte, North Carolina, native paced the field until a late-stage caution fell with nine laps to go. With the lead pack making the trip down pit road, the No. 24 pit crew put Byron on the front-row for the restart with the Team Chevy driver going on to pick up his seventh stage win of the season.<\/p>\n
\u00b7 It was as an all-Hendrick Motorsports front-row with William Byron and Kyle Larson leading the field to the green-flag for Stage Two. A stellar start positioned Larson in the top spot to lead his first laps of the day. Sitting comfortable at the top of the leaderboard, Larson pulled away to nearly a two-second lead over teammate, Byron, at the 30-lap marker of the stage. With yet another green-flag pit cycle near the halfway mark of the stage, a clean stop by the No. 5 pit crew kept Larson in the top position once the field cycled through. Quiet on the radio, Larson went on to maintain an average one-second gap to second en route to a Team Chevy stage sweep at the 1.5-mile Nevada oval.<\/p>\n
\u00b7 The first to exit pit road under the stage break, Kyle Larson resumed position in the lead, but saw a hard-charging William Byron in his rear-view mirror. Byron held the margin of Larson\u2019s lead to under one-second for most of the run as the third green-flag pit cycle of the day was on the horizon. A 9.7-second stop for the No. 24 team was enough for Byron to make the pass on his teammate during the cycle that ultimately put him at the top of the leaderboard as the driver crossed the line to mark 45 laps to go. But his journey to an early Championship Four berth ended when a massive hit with a lap car ended the No. 24 team\u2019s day early. Varying pit strategies among the lead pack saw Larson lineup in the fourth position as the first car with a set of four fresh Goodyear tires for the restart. With a short-run to the checkered-flag, Larson went on to cap-off a strong day with a runner-up finish.<\/p>\n
Team Chevy Unofficial Top-10 Results<\/p>\n
Pos. Driver<\/p>\n
2nd \u2013 Kyle Larson<\/p>\n
7th \u2013 Alex Bowman<\/p>\n
8th \u2013 Kyle Busch<\/p>\n
Chevrolet\u2019s season statistics with 33 NASCAR Cup Series races complete:<\/p>\n
\ufeffWins: 14<\/p>\n
Poles: 11<\/p>\n
Top-Fives: 61<\/p>\n
Top 10s: 135<\/p>\n
Stage Wins: 25
UP NEXT: The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of Eight will continue at Talladega Superspeedway with the YellaWood 400 on Sunday, October 19, at 2 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.<\/p>\n
Post-Race Driver Quotes:<\/p>\n
Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Finished: 23rd<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly wasn\u2019t an ideal finish today for our Tootsie\u2019s Chevy. In the final stage of the race, we got the handling figured out and were moving forward, then we got caught up in the accident and had some damage we had to work on. But, we rallied to finish 23rd.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austin Dillon, No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Finished: 25th<\/p>\n
\u201cIt never fails that when we have a great day going, something happens out of our control. Our Get Bioethanol Chevrolet was really good. The balance started on the free side and then we got it a little too tight. After our green flag stops, the car would fire off good. Almost too good which is what caused us to fade at the end of the run. We were in position to get a top-10 finish but then got caught up in that multi-car wreck with less than 25 laps to go. I hate it for our No. 3 team but it\u2019s a positive that our car had speed on an intermediate. Everyone did a great job today and this is something we can build off moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Finished: 2nd<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we did everything that we could do. The Toyota\u2019s were really fast for the short-run there. I saw the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin, race winner) line up behind me and I knew he\u2019d be difficult to hold off. If any one of the Toyota\u2019s got clear and could get rolling, I knew it would be tough. He did a great job, though. He still had to make the right moves, which he did. I felt like I was doing all I could to stay in front of him, while also trying to track down the No. 19 (Chase Briscoe). We just came up a little bit short, but overall, it was a great day for the No. 5 Chevrolet team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are you encouraged heading into Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did have a great points day, but it could easily change next week. We\u2019ll just try to execute again; have a good points day at Talladega (Superspeedway) and be in a good position heading into Martinsville (Speedway).\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Finished: 8th<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of the entire No. 8 zone Chevrolet team for getting us to a place from qualifying 32nd to finishing eighth today at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. We worked throughout the race to correct rear grip issues and a loose-handling Chevy to get the car to a competitive pace by race\u2019s end. Now the name of the game is consistency and continuing to finish out front the remainder of the season, and of course get our Richard Childress Racing machine back to victory lane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Finished: 18th<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started our day strong. I thought we had the balance of our No. 9 NAPA Chevy in a really good spot. I was just happy with the way it was driving. Unfortunately, we got a pit road penalty in Stage Two and we just got back in traffic. I needed something pretty different, balance-wise, to be good back there. I probably missed a little bit on my first read and we only had a couple shots to try and help that. Just got behind on adjustments for track position. We\u2019ll regroup and try again next weekend at Talladega (Superspeedway).\u201d<\/p>\n
William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident in the final stage.<\/p>\n
Finished: 36th<\/p>\n
Walk us through how all of that went down and how much time you had to react when you saw the No. 10 (Ty Dillon) coming to pit road\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I never saw him (Ty Dillon) wave. I didn\u2019t see any indication that he was pitting. It was probably 12 to 15 laps after we had pitted, so I thought the cycle was fully over. Nobody said anything to my spotter, from what I know. I had zero idea. Everyone has been wrapping the paint really far around the corner and that\u2019s what I was doing to have a good lap. I was watching him thinking \u2013 okay, he missed the bottom a little bit here. He just started slowing and I had no idea what was going on. I\u2019m just devastated. I had no indication. Obviously, I wouldn\u2019t have just driven full-speed into the back of him like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you talk about the devastation, are you thinking you had a winning race car today?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were right there with the No. 5 (Kyle Larson). I got loose a few laps before and lost the lead, which I was bummed about. But I was going to try and get my balance back to a reasonable place. I was a little bit loose that run, looser than I was expecting to be, and I was just kind of pacing it. With as good as we were and as good as the race was going, for random things like that to happen, it just sucks. I can\u2019t believe it. Obviously I would never do that. During the cycle, you\u2019re anticipating guys pitting. It just sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet<\/p>\n
Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident in the final stage.<\/p>\n
Finished: 33rd<\/p>\n
\u201cFrustrating end to the day. My 88 Jockey Chevy was so good there at the start, then towards the end it was a bit tight but we were still in a position to get a good finish. Wish our result would\u2019ve shown the race we had. Proud of my 88 team for bringing another rocket ship.\u201d<\/p>\n
GM PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A valiant effort by Kyle Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team ended with a runner-up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,716,717,4384,8661,26793,720,634,721,1704,722,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-208821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-channel","11":"tag-charlotte","12":"tag-hendrick-motorsports","13":"tag-kyle-busch","14":"tag-martinsville-speedway","15":"tag-motor","16":"tag-nascar","17":"tag-series","18":"tag-speed","19":"tag-speedway","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}