NASCAR viewer’s guide: Las Vegas Motor Speedway

By Zach SturnioloMar 2, 2022, 7:00 AM EST

NASCAR Cup Series teams have an idea of what to expect this week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But with a new car, whatever idea they have is still only a guess.

The premier series hits Sin City for the first of two races this season at the 1.5-mile, D-shaped oval (3:30 p.m. ET Sunday on Fox). Following a tumultuous 2020, Kyle Larson began his remarkable return to glory with a win in this race a year ago, marking the first of a 10-win championship season. In the playoffs, Denny Hamlin was the one celebrating in victory lane for the second and final time in 2021.

Of course, that was with an old car — the Gen 6 — and if last week’s race at Auto Club Speedway taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. The Next Gen car makes its mile-and-a-half debut at Las Vegas, three months after organizational tests at Charlotte, another 1.5-miler.

The pavement in Vegas isn’t nearly as worn out and abrasive as the one competitors tackled last week in Fontana. Still, the tighter confines and limited knowledge might make for unpredictable racing — and unpredictable frontrunners.

Parity out of the gate

One of the major themes echoing throughout the NASCAR garage entering 2022 was that the Next Gen car would bring more parity throughout the field.

Two races make for a small sample size, but the results so far prove that to be true. Following events at Daytona and Auto Club, 19 different drivers have top-10 finishes. The only driver with two top 10s is Aric Almirola, who currently sits sixth in points.

Underscoring the point – nine teams made up the top 10 of last week’s finishing order and 17 different drivers have led at least one lap already.

Whether that trend continues remains to be seen. However, even recent events at Las Vegas have offered their share of open opportunity. The last five Vegas races have been won by five different drivers, with the last four winners each coming from different organizations.

Perhaps Sunday’s race will begin a new trend of repeat winners and the unpredictability will slow down a bit. But that’s a big maybe.

Setting the stage

Martin Truex Jr. swept Stages 1 and 2 at Daytona, and Tyler Reddick accomplished the same at Auto Club. But neither driver finished inside the top 10 in their respective races.

Stage 2 winners at Las Vegas, meanwhile, have won seven of the last nine races there, including both Larson and Hamlin a year ago. In that span, Truex (2017) and Kevin Harvick (March 2018) won both stages and the event.

Of course, each Stage 1 winner had also won the race at Auto Club up until Reddick’s flat tire cost him last weekend.

Toyota’s not-so-winning streak

The last time we saw a Toyota go to Victory Lane was way back in October 2021, when Bubba Wallace broke through to score his first career Cup win at Talladega Superspeedway. The last time before that was his 23XI Racing team owner, Denny Hamlin, who won at Las Vegas one week prior.

It’s been a long time since Toyota won a race, and overheating issues for three of the four Joe Gibbs Racing cars at Auto Club didn’t help the manufacturer’s cause. Toyota has won two of the last five in Vegas, though, so perhaps this is the week JGR or 23XI right the ship. Kurt Busch, the hometown driver and 23XI’s newest addition, won here in September 2020 too, so there should be hope within the Toyota camp.

Tough sledding so far

The best way to start the season is to be on track when the checkered flag waves. Christopher Bell, William Byron and rookie Harrison Burton have yet to be so fortunate.

All three drivers have two DNFs in two races this season, the best finish among them a 33rd-place effort from Burton in California.

Surely, they’ll find their way and start knocking out more reasonable finishes. But no question JGR, Hendrick Motorsports and Wood Brothers Racing are wondering how Jacques Villeneuve, who ran only the Daytona 500, sits higher in points (32nd) than any of their cars through two races.

Championship experience

Thirteen of the last 14 Las Vegas winners have won championships. The lone exception is Hamlin, who earned his first career win in Vegas last year. That list includes Larson, Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Truex, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth.

Entry lists

There are 37 cars on the Cup Series entry list for Sunday, including Greg Biffle in the No. 44 Chevrolet for NY Racing Team.

Meanwhile, 42 cars dot the Xfinity list for Saturday’s event, meaning four cars will fail to qualify.

On the Camping World Truck Series entry list are 37 trucks for 36 spots. One truck will fail to qualify.

NASCAR Cup Series Entry List — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

NASCAR Xfinity Series Entry List — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Entry List — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Qualifying order

In a change from its previously announced practice procedures, all Cup teams will have 35 minutes to practice ahead of qualifying on Saturday. NASCAR announced the change Wednesday in an effort to provide teams more practice time. The series debuted its two-group, 15-minute practice sessions last weekend at Auto Club but was delayed by multiple on-track incidents.

After practice, teams will then be parted into two groups — Group A and Group B — for single-car, single-lap qualifying. The top five drivers from each group will then advance to the next round for another single-car, single-lap qualifying effort to determine the top 10 starting positions.

The Xfinity and Truck series will each hold single-car, single-lap qualifying for all entries following its 20-minute practice sessions.

NASCAR Cup Series Qualifying Order — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

NASCAR Xfinity Series Qualifying Order — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Qualifying Order — Las Vegas Motor Speedway

This weekend’s schedule and forecast

(All times Eastern)

Friday, March 4

Forecast: Partly cloudy, high of 63 degrees, low of 47 degrees.

4:30 p.m. — Truck practice/qualifying (FS1)
6:30 p.m. — Xfinity practice/qualifying (FS1)
9 p.m. — Truck race (FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Saturday, March 5

Forecast: Mostly cloudy, high of 56 degrees, low of 40 degress.

1:30 p.m. — Cup practice (FS2)
2 p.m. — Cup qualifying (FS1, PRN)
4:30 p.m. — Xfinity race (FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Sunday, March 6

Forecast: Partly cloudy, high of 62 degrees, low of 41 degrees.

3:30 p.m. — Cup race (267 laps, 400 miles; FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

NASCAR Friday schedule at Gateway, Portland

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 7:00 AM EDT

Craftsman Truck Series teams will be on track Friday at World Wide Technology Raceway to prepare for Saturday’s race. Cup teams will go through inspection before getting on track Saturday.

Xfinity Series teams will go through inspection Friday in preparation for their race Saturday at Portland International Raceway.

Here is Friday’s schedule:

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weather

Friday: Partly cloudy with a high in the low 90s.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

1 – 8 p.m. — Craftsman Truck Series
4 – 9 p.m. — Cup Series

Track activity

6 – 6:30 p.m. — Truck practice (FS1)
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. — Truck qualifying (FS1)

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday: Mostly sunny with a high of 77 degrees.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

6-11 p.m. — Xfinity Series (no track activity on Friday)

Friday 5: NASCAR’s $1 million question is can the culture change?

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 6:00 AM EDT

NASCAR Cup teams have paid nearly $1 million in fines this season, a total that is more than triple what they paid last season for inspection-related infractions.

The money — $975,000 after just 14 of 36 points races — goes to the NASCAR Foundation. While the fines help a good cause, it is a troubling number, a point that a senior NASCAR official made clear this week.

Stewart-Haas Racing was the latest Cup team to be penalized. NASCAR issued a $250,000 fine, among other penalties, for a counterfeit part found on Chase Briscoe’s car following Monday’s Coca-Cola 600. The team cited a “quality control lapse” for a part that “never should’ve been on a car going to the racetrack.”

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said this week that if violations continue, the sanctioning body will respond.

“If we need to bring more cars (to the R&D Center), we’ll do that,” he said. “Our part of this as the sanctioning body is to keep a level playing field for all the competitors, and that’s what they expect us to do and that’s what we’ll continue to do. … Whatever we need to do, we will do that.”

NASCAR discovered the infraction with Briscoe’s car and a violation with Austin Dillon’s car at the R&D Center after races this season.

Sawyer also noted that the “culture” of race teams needs to change.

“From a business model and to be equitable and sustainable going forward, this was the car that we needed,” Sawyer said about the Next Gen car. “To go with that, we needed a deterrent model that would support that.

“We’ve been very clear. We’ve been very consistent with this … and we will continue to do that. The culture that was in our garage and in the race team shops on the Gen-6 car was more of a manufacturing facility. The Next Gen car, that’s not the business model.

“The race teams, they’re doing a better job. We still have a lot of work to do, but they have to change that culture within the walls of the race shop.”

While NASCAR has made it clear that single-source vendor parts are not to be modified, teams will look for ways to find an advantage. With the competition tight — there have been 22 different winners in the first 50 races of the Next Gen car era — any advantage could be significant.

Twelve races remain, including Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway, before the playoffs begin. The pressure is building on teams.

“Some race teams, at this stage in the game, their performance is not where they would like for it to be and they’re going to be working hard,” Sawyer said. “If they feel like they need to step out of bounds and do things and just take the risk, then they may do that. That’s not uncommon. We’ve seen that over the years.

“The one thing that we have to keep in mind is we’ve raced the Next Gen car for a full season. We’re in year two, just say 18 months into it. So last year, they were just getting the parts and pieces, getting ready, getting cars prepared and getting to the racetrack.

“Now they’ve had them for a year. They’ve had them for an offseason. It’s given their engineers and the people back in the shop a lot more time to think, ‘Maybe we could do this, maybe we could do that.’

“By bringing these cars back (to the R&D Center) and taking them down to basically the nuts and bolts and a thorough inspection — and we will continue to do that — I believe we will get our message across. We’ll have to continue to do this for some period in time, but I have great faith that we will get there.”

A similar message was delivered by Sawyer to drivers this week when NASCAR suspended Chase Elliott one race for wrecking Denny Hamlin in retaliation for being forced into the wall.

Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that “in the heat of the battle things happen, but (drivers) have to learn to react in a different way.”

Sawyer also noted that the message on how to race wasn’t just geared to those in Cup.

“We have to get that across not only to our veterans, guys that are superstars like Denny, like Bubba (Wallace) and like Chase and all our of national series Cup drivers, but also our young drivers that are coming up through the ranks that are racing in the Northeast in modifieds and in short tracks across the country,” he said. “That’s just not an acceptable behavior in how you would race your other competitors.

“There are a lot of things you can do to show your displeasure. That’s just not going to be one of them that we’re going to tolerate.”

2. Special ride

Corey LaJoie gets the chance to drive a Hendrick Motorsports car this weekend due to Chase Elliott’s one-race suspension.

“It’s a far cry difference from when I started my Cup career six years ago,” LaJoie said on his “Stacking Pennies” podcast this week. “There was a Twitter page “Did Corey crash?” … Going from that guy just trying to swim and stay above water and trying to learn the ropes to filling in for a champion like Chase Elliott for Hendrick Motorsports, it feels surreal.”

It was a little more than three years ago that LaJoie gave car owner Rick Hendrick a handwritten note to be considered to replace Jimmie Johnson in the No. 48 car after the 2020 season.

“This was the first time I’ve gotten a letter from the heart,” Hendrick told NBC Sports in February 2020 of LaJoie’s letter. “I’ve gotten letters and phones calls, usually from agents. It was really a heartfelt letter and it was really personal.

“I was impressed with him before and am more impressed after.”

LaJoie admitted on his podcast this week that he wouldn’t have been ready to drive the No. 48 car then.

“I wouldn’t have been ready, whether it be in my maturation, my game, my knowledge of the race cars,” he said. “The person that I was wasn’t ready for the opportunity like that.”

Now he gets the chance. He enters this weekend 19th in the season standings, 38 points behind Alex Bowman for what would be the final playoff spot at this time.

“It’s an opportunity to hopefully show myself, as well as other people, what I’ve been thinking (of) my potential as a race car driver,” LaJoie said on his podcast. “But I also think you have to just settle in and be appreciative of the opportunity.”

3. Special phone call

With Corey LaJoie moving into Chase Elliott’s car for Sunday’s Cup race, LaJoie’s car needed a driver. Craftsman Truck Series driver Carson Hocevar will make his Cup debut in LaJoie’s No. 7 car for Spire Motorsports.

Once details were finalized this week, the 20-year-old Hocevar called his dad.

“I don’t know if he really believed it,” Hocevar said.

He told his dad: “Hey, this is actually happening.”

His father owns a coin and jewelry shop and is looking to close the store Sunday and have someone watch his two puppies so he can attend the race.

For Hocevar, it’s quite a turnaround for a driver who has been at the center of controversy at times.

Ryan Preece was critical of Hocevar’s racing late in the Charlotte Truck event in May 2022. Preece said to FS1: “All you kids watching right now wanting to get to this level, don’t do that. Race with respect. Don’t wreck the guy on the outside of you trying to win your first race. It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

NASCAR penalized Hocevar two laps for hooking Taylor Gray in the right rear during the Truck race at Martinsville in April.

Hocevar acknowledged he has had to change how he drives.

“Last year was really, really tough for me and that’s no excuse,” Hocevar said this week. “I just was mentally wrong on a lot of things, had the wrong mindset. I wanted to win so badly that I thought I could outwork stuff and it kind of turned some people away. … I wasn’t enjoying the time there. I was letting the results dictate that.

“I was taking results too personal. If we were going to be running seventh, I took it as I was a seventh-place driver and I wasn’t good enough. So I started making desperate moves. I did desperate things at times even last year that I’ve been able to calm down and look myself in the mirror and had a lot of heart-to-heart conversations.”

He called the Martinsville race “a turning point” for him and knew he needed to change how he drove. He has had three consecutive top-five finishes in the Truck Series.

4. Moving forward

In a way, Zane Smith can relate to what Carson Hocevar will experience this weekend. Smith, competing in the Truck Series, made his Cup debut last year at World Wide Technology Raceway. Smith filled in for RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher, who missed the race because of COVID-19 symptoms. Smith finished 17th.

“That one that I got for RFK Racing was a huge opportunity,” Smith said of helping him get some Cup rides this season. “I was super thankful for that. I think that run we had got my stock up and then, honestly, getting the Truck championship helped that rise as well.

“I think just time in the Cup car is so important, and I think once that new Cup car came out, people realized that you don’t have to do the route of Truck, Xfinity, Cup. The Cup car is so far apart from anything, though it does kind of race like a truck, so I don’t think you need to go that round of Truck, Xfinity, Cup. I think a lot of people would agree with me on that.

“I’m happy for these Cup starts that I’m getting. I’m happy for that one that I got last year at a place like Gateway. I think every time that you’re in one you learn a lot.”

Smith has made five Cup starts this season, finishing a career-best 10th in last week’s Coca-Cola 600 for Front Row Motorsports. The former Truck champion has two series wins this year and is third in the season standings.

5. Notable numbers

A look at some of notable numbers heading into this weekend’s Cup race at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois:

5 — Most points wins in the Next Gen car (William Byron, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Chase Elliott)

7 — Different winners in the last seven points races: Christopher Bell (Bristol Dirt), Kyle Larson (Martinsville), Kyle Busch (Talladega), Martin Truex Jr. (Dover), Denny Hamlin (Kansas), William Byron (Darlington), Ryan Blaney (Coca-Cola 600).

17 — Points between first (Ross Chastain) and sixth (Christopher Bell) in the Cup standings

88 — Degrees at Kansas, the hottest temperature for a Cup race this season (the forecast for Sunday’s race calls for a high in the low 90s)

100 — Consecutive start for Austin Dillon this weekend

500 — Cup start for Brad Keselowski this weekend

687 — Laps led by William Byron, most by any Cup driver this season

805 — Cup start for Kevin Harvick this weekend, tying him with Jeff Gordon for ninth on the all-time list.

Dr. Diandra: How level is the playing field after 50 Next Gen races?

By Diandra Leslie-PeleckyJun 1, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT

Last weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 marks 50 Next Gen races. The 2022 season produced 19 different winners, including a few first-career wins. Let’s see what the data say about how level the playing field is now.

I’m comparing the first 50 Next Gen races (the 2022 season plus the first 14 races of 2023) to the 2020 season and the first 14 races of 2021. I selected those two sets of races to produce roughly the same types of tracks. I focus on top-10 finishes as a metric for performance. Below, I show the top-10 finishes for the 13 drivers who ran for the same team over the periods in question.

Because some drivers missed races, I compare top-10 rates: the number of top-10 finishes divided by the number of races run. The graph below shows changes in top-10 rates for the drivers who fared the worst with the Next Gen car.

Six drivers had double-digit losses in their top-10 rates. Kevin Harvick had the largest drop, with 74% top-10 finishes in the Gen-6 sample but only 46% top-10 finishes in the first 50 Next Gen races.

Kyle Larson didn’t qualify for the graph because he ran only four races in 2020. I thought it notable, however, that despite moving from the now-defunct Chip Ganassi NASCAR team to Hendrick Motorsports, Larson’s top-10 rate fell from 66.7% to 48.0%.

The next graph shows the corresponding data for drivers who improved their finishes in the Next Gen car. This graph again includes only drivers who stayed with the same team.

Alex Bowman had a marginal gain, but he missed six races this year. Therefore, his percent change value is less robust than other drivers’ numbers.

Expanding the field

I added drivers who changed teams to the dataset and highlighted them in gray.

A couple notes on the new additions:

Brad Keselowski had the largest loss in top-10 rate of any driver, but that may be more attributable to his move from Team Penske to RFK Motorsports rather than to the Next Gen car.
Christopher Bell moved from Leavine Family Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2021. His improvement is likely overestimated due to equipment quality differences.
Erik Jones stayed even, but that’s after moving from JGR (13 top-10 finishes in 2020) to Richard Petty Motorsports (six top 10s in 2021.) I view that change as a net positive.

At the end of last season, I presented the tentative hypothesis that older drivers had a harder time adapting to the Next Gen car. Less practice time mitigated their experience dialing in a car so that it was to their liking given specific track conditions.

But something else leaps out from this analysis.

Is the playing field tilting again?

Michael McDowell is not Harvick-level old, but he will turn 39 this year. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is 35. Both have improved with the Next Gen Car. Chase Elliott (27 years old) and William Byron (25) aren’t old, either, but their top-10 rates have gone down.

Drivers running for the best-funded teams earned fewer top-10 finishes while drivers from less-funded teams (mostly) gained those finishes.

Trackhouse Racing and 23XI — two of the newest teams — account for much of the gains in top-10 finishes. Ross Chastain isn’t listed in the table because he didn’t have full-time Cup Series rides in 2020 or 2021. His 9.1% top-10 rate in that period is with lower-level equipment. He earned 27 top-10 finishes in the first 50 races (54%) with the Next Gen car.

This analysis suggests that age isn’t the only relevant variable. One interpretation of the data thus far is that the Next Gen (and its associated rules changes) eliminated the advantage well-funded teams built up over years of racing the Gen-5 and Gen-6 cars.

The question now is whether that leveling effect is wearing off. Even though parts are the same, more money means being able to hire the best people and buying more expensive computers for engineering simulations.

Compare the first 14 races of 2022 to the first 14 of 2023.

Last year at this time, 23XI and Trackhouse Racing had each won two races. This year, they combine for one win.
It took Byron eight races to win his second race of the year in 2022. This year, he won the third and fourth races of the year. Plus, he’s already won his third race this year.
Aside from Stenhouse’s Daytona 500 win, this year’s surprise winners — Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Blaney — are both from major teams.

We’re only 14 races into the 2023 season. There’s not enough data to determine the relative importance of age versus building a notebook for predicting success in the Next Gen car.

But this is perhaps the most important question. The Next Gen car leveled the playing field last year.

Will it stay level?

NASCAR weekend schedule at World Wide Technology Raceway, Portland

By Dustin LongJun 1, 2023, 7:00 AM EDT

NASCAR’s top three series are racing this weekend in two different locations. Cup and Craftsman Truck teams will compete at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, and the Xfinity Series will compete at Portland International Raceway.

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weekend weather

Friday: Partly cloudy with a high of 87 degrees during Truck qualifying.

Saturday: Sunny. Temperatures will be around 80 degrees for the start of Cup practice and climb to 88 degrees by the end of Cup qualifying. Forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 93 degrees around the start of the Truck race.

Sunday: Mostly sunny with a high of 92 degrees and no chance of rain at the start of the Cup race.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

1 – 8 p.m. — Craftsman Truck Series
4 – 9 p.m. — Cup Series

Track activity

6 – 6:30 p.m. — Truck practice (FS1)
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. — Truck qualifying (FS1)

Saturday, June 3

Garage open

8 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. — Cup Series
12:30 p.m. — Truck Series

Track activity

10 – 10:45 a.m. — Cup practice (FS1, Motor Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
10:45 a.m. – 12 p.m. — Cup qualifying (FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
1:30 p.m. — Truck race (160 laps, 200 miles; FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Sunday, June 4

Garage open

12:30 p.m. — Cup Series

Track activity

3:30 p.m. — Cup race (240 laps, 300 miles; FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday: Mostly sunny with a high of 77 degrees.

Saturday: Mostly sunny with a high of 73 degrees and no chance of rain around the start of the Xfinity race.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

6-11 p.m. — Xfinity Series

Saturday, June 3

Garage open

10 a.m. — Xfinity Series

Track activity

11:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. — Xfinity practice (No TV)
12 – 1 p.m. — Xfinity qualifying (FS1)
4:30 p.m. — Xfinity race (75 laps, 147.75 miles; FS1, Motor Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Parity out of the gate

Setting the stage

Toyota’s not-so-winning streak

Tough sledding so far

Championship experience

Entry lists

Qualifying order

This weekend’s schedule and forecast

Read more about NASCAR

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Read more about NASCAR

2. Special ride

3. Special phone call

4. Moving forward

5. Notable numbers

Read more about NASCAR

Expanding the field

Is the playing field tilting again?

Read more about NASCAR

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weekend weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Saturday, June 3

Sunday, June 4

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Saturday, June 3

Read more about NASCAR