Via two Cup Sequence races, it is protected to say NASCAR’s 2024 season is heading in the right direction.
After William Byron produced a season-opening Daytona 500 victory in Hendrick Motorsports’ first race throughout its fortieth season within the sequence, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch and Daniel Suarez raced to the checkers precisely like that — three abreast, inside line to frontstretch wall, in that order — at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Suarez got here out the winner by 0.003 seconds, the third-closest end in NASCAR historical past, and recorded his second profession win.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway — the positioning of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 — has a troublesome act to observe.
Operating third coming into Flip 3, Suarez charged on the surface, made his three-wide transfer and maneuvered his strategy to probably the most talked-about end since Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch, with the 2 automobiles leaning on one another and smoke billowing, at Darlington Raceway on March 16, 2003.
Craven’s end was by a NASCAR-record 0.002 seconds, which Jimmie Johnson matched eight years later by edging Clint Bowyer at Talladega Superspeedway on April 17, 2011.
Of the energetic Cup drivers, former teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano paved the way in LVMS wins with three apiece. Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. every personal two.
For Keselowski, he made information at Atlanta, however it had nothing to do with successful.
The RFK Racing driver and his No. 6 Ford Mustang Darkish Horse have been concerned in a wreck and ended up thirty third, ending simply 218 of the 260 laps.
That stretched the winless skid to 100 races for the 40-year-old Keselowski.
“It is a disgrace,” mentioned Keselowski, who ran within the prime 5 and led two laps. “We have been in good place. We ran up entrance a lot of the day and made good changes on the automobile. (We) weren’t capable of make it depend with a stable end I really feel like we deserved right this moment. It is a bummer, however we’re working up entrance and that is a great factor. We simply weren’t capable of end it off.”
He final went to Victory Lane within the desert on Sept. 16, 2018, when he gained for the third time in a string of six LVMS races.
Bubba Wallace is the one driver with two top-10 finishes this season. He was fifth at Daytona and Atlanta to face fourth within the factors race. Martin Truex Jr. has seven consecutive top-10 finishes in Vegas, and 12 top-10s in his final 13 appearances. That features wins in 2017 and 2019.
Profitable simply as soon as at his hometown observe, 2009 victor Kyle Busch mentioned he doesn’t really feel the strain of coming residence.
“You continue to wish to win there each time you go, (it) being the hometown,” the Richard Childress Racing driver mentioned. “I feel I’ve 4 or 5 third-place finishes there within the final six or seven races. We’re proper there, we simply do not get it.”
In time beyond regulation there a 12 months in the past, Byron gambled on right-side tires, beat teammate Larson off pit highway and handed chief Truex in a two-lap shootout for his first win on the 1.5-mile observe.
