William Byron Dominates to a Win at Las Vegas

The West Coast Swing continued on for the NASCAR Cup Series as they headed to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Pennzoil 400, the third race of the 2023 Season. One major story broke out heading into Sunday’s race, that being Chase Elliott’s injury.

Elliott suffered a fractured tibia in a snowboarding incident and was sent to surgery on Friday. The 2020 Cup Series Champion will be out for several weeks. Josh Berry, a driver for Jr Motorsports in the Xfinity Series, was tapped to take over the ride that is occupied by Elliott.

As for the race, it was a more traditional long green-flag run race with plenty of pit strategy to be played that ended with honestly the best car winning the race. That being the No. 24 Chevrolet of William Byron, followed by his two Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman. Byron went on to lead 176 of 271 laps and swept both stages in the race that lead to his fifth career win. Bubba Wallace finished fourth, while Christopher Bell finished fifth.

“We spent a lot of time in the off-season just going through running at the sim with Chevy and running on iRacing and just trying to get better as a race car driver and as a team,” Byron said in his post-race interview. “It’s all about the team. It’s a great pit crew.”

As for Chevrolet, they won the first three races of the season now. For the Chevy bowtie, that hasn’t happened since 2010.

Kyle Larson looked to have the win in the bag as he held on to the lead since the start of the final stage. That was until a wreck caused by Aric Almirola brought out the caution with four laps to go that ultimately cost Larson a shot to win.

A late restart had many leaders except for Martin Truex Jr pit, hoping to gamble and collect his first win since 2021, but Truex was unable to hang on as he was swarmed by the other leaders with fresher tires, putting the No. 19 Toyota in seventh.

Josh Berry, subbing in for Chase Elliott, was not a factor as he finished in 29th. Berry had two previous Cup starts, both in 2021 and with the old Gen Six car.

Joey Logano scored the pole but had a rather troublesome day. As at one point, he smacked the wall while battling Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch and spun down into the grass on the front stretch. This accident was the first accident produced caution and sent Logano to the garage.

Austin Cindric was sixth, while Martin Truex Jr, Justin Haley, Kevin Harvick, and Daniel Suarez rounded out the top ten.

Who To Watch: Hendrick Motorsports

It feels like Hendrick Motorsports could be a team to watch in 2023 after the strong showing at Las Vegas. A performance like that could be a strong indicator of what’s to come in 2023. You can also make the case for the Chevrolet teams. You had JTG-Daughtry win the Daytona 500, Trackhouse is picking up where they left off and so far things are going well for Kyle Busch at Richard Childress Racing. For Hendrick, Byron can certainly collect more wins this season. As for Larson, you don’t have to worry about, I’m confident he will be a championship contender in 2023. He caught fire at the end of 2022 and that will carry over into 2023. Alex Bowman had a quiet 2022 with one win and was sidelined for four races with a concussion he had at Texas. I think Bowman will brush all of that off and win some races this season. As for Chase Elliott, I think he will win a couple of races once he’s back. We saw what Kyle Busch did in 2015 after being sidelined for several weeks with an injury. Chase could certainly do the same. For now, Josh Berry will continue to race in the No. 9 on the ovals with IMSA star Jordan Taylor running on the road courses.