William Byron leads Hendrick podium sweep for Elliott

With Chase Elliott out as he begins his recovery from a broken left tibia, his Hendrick Motorsports team-mates decided to give him a get-well-soon present in the form of a 1–2–3 finish in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. William Byron led Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman in overtime to his fifth career NASCAR Cup Series win.

Byron dominated on Sunday as he led 176 of 271 laps, the most of his career on an intermediate track, and won both stages with either Larson or Bowman in tow. The win nearly slipped away for him in the final stage as pit strategies meant the lead traded hands between multiple drivers before settling on Larson. Things took a turn when Aric Almirola hit the wall with two laps remaining to trigger overtime, from which Martin Truex Jr. elected to gamble by staying out on older tyres.

The move seemed to work at first for Truex before Byron and his team-mates quickly coasted ahead to lead both overtime laps.

“If you can somehow get a good restart, get to the white flag and they crash, then you win the thing,” Truex explained. “It almost happened. We were second at the white, we were second going into turn one on the last lap and just got tight and got in a bad spot coming off of turn two and lost momentum down the back.”

The Hendrick podium sweep marked the team’s strongest outing since all four cars were atop the leaderboard in the 2021 Drydene 400. Elliott’s substitute driver Josh Berry led 1–2–3 finishes for Hendrick affiliate JR Motorsports in his two Xfinity Series wins at Las Vegas in 2021 and 2022. Hendrick also notched a 1–2 with Bowman and Larson in last year’s Pennzoil 400.

“I think I speak for everyone in the fact that we miss Chase out here,” said Byron. “He’s a big contributor to feedback and our debriefs and he’s a great race car driver. Has a lot to offer there. I think there was a void there, but I think we were able to fill it with just kind of coming together as a team, and having Josh come on board, he’s obviously a great race car driver, too, and I know him from the past.”

Berry finished twenty-ninth in Elliott’s #9 after struggling with throttle problems. Hendrick president Jeff Andrews stated afterwards that “Josh did an amazing job for us given the circumstances, and given the fact he’s not ever been in one of these Next Gen cars before, really happy with what he did for us today.”

Pole winner Joey Logano was the lone retirement after contact with former Penske team-mate Brad Keselowski on lap 184 sent him through the grass and caused him to briefly go airbourne. It is the first Las Vegas Cup race with just one non-finisher since Kurt Busch crashed out of the 2019 fall race.

Race results