At the conclusion of the dual-tire duel in the desert last weekend in Phoenix, the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series headed north for Nevada to wrestle with the high banks of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Vegas marks the first trip of the year to an intermediate track, but don’t let its cookie-cutter shape fool you. This is one wicked circuit.
With asphalt old enough to graduate high school in May, this 1.5-mile trioval features 20° of banking in both of its turns with drivers running from the apron to the wall and everywhere in between in the pursuit of speed.
Coming down the sloped front straight, drivers fly into turn 1 at speeds approaching 200mph, easily one of the fastest tracks on the Cup calendar.
With a golden ticket to the Playoffs on the line, the next 400 miles will favor the bold, just like at the poker table. Will the fastest car in Sin City come out with the win, or will a crafty gamble snatch a much-needed victory from the jaws of certain defeat?
There’s only one way to find out as 36 drivers roll the dice in today’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas.
Last Week at Phoenix…
Normally, this section gives a brief overview of last week’s race while plugging one of our talented writers and their review of last week’s race.
However, I was the one that dipped the pen for last week’s race review, so give it a look to find out how Christopher Bell claimed his third consecutive victory.
This Week in NASCAR
The option tire was widely viewed as a success after last week’s race in Phoenix, so I wrote a piece in the middle of the week to discuss how the option tire could enhance the racing at select tracks.
As for actual news, not a whole lot of headlines this week.
NASCAR Hall of Famer Carl Edwards inked a deal with Amazon to become a Prime Video studio analyst for the foreseeable future, alongside Danielle Trotta and Corey Lajoie.
FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass revealed a rule change this week on Twitter relating to the Open Exemption Provisional that was debuted at Daytona this year.
Former Coca-Cola 600 winner Casey Mears announced this week that he’ll be making his return to the Cup Series with Garage 66 at Martinsville later this month, with HitchGo sponsoring the No. 66 Ford.
According to François-David Rouleau of Le Journal de Québec, the NASCAR Xfinity and Truck Series might be making their grand return to the Great White North as soon as next season. Plans are coming together to send the two lower series up in 2026 in preparation for Cup’s debut in 2027.
The racing would move the Truck Series from the familiar confines of the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park course that they ran from 2013-2019 and send them with Xfinity to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal where the Xfinity Series raced from 2007-2012.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series made their grand return Friday night where Corey Heim battled speeding penalties and a ton of traffic en route to his second victory of 2025. To read more about that race, take a look at my race review from last night.
As for the Xfinity Series, the only calamity of the day came on the opening lap when William Sawalich lost grip on the exit of turn 2, crashing into the wall from his eighth-place starting spot as Parker Retzlaff got turned around while trying to slow for the accident.
The rest of the race focused on drivers with fast cars that made the least amount of mistakes as a cool day in Las Vegas meant the track surface had exceptional grip.
That said. the Xfinity drivers didn’t really take advantage of Vegas’ myriad of grooves, instead opting to race one another on the bottom for much of the race. Because of the lack of passing, the race came down to the two stage winners: Justin Allgaier and Aric Almirola.
Connor Zilisch was in the mix for most of the event as well, but a speeding penalty on the final green-flag stop ended his chances on a day where there were few cautions to act as mulligans. Pole sitter Sammy Smith also lost a top-5 spot due to a speeding penalty in the same round of stops.
In the end, it would come down to a 20-lap face-off between Almirola and Allgaier. Allgaier held the advantage, sticking his car to the apron as the former Cup winner was in hot pursuit.
With just a couple laps to go, Almirola went to the very top of the track in turns 3 & 4 — a move that lost him time twice — and lost his momentum again, allowing Allgaier to scoot away to his first win of 2025 and officially launching his title defense.
The Race
Today’s Pennzoil 400 will be broadcast on Fox Sports 1 starting at 3:30pm Eastern time with Mike Joy, Clint Bowyer, and Kevin Harvick in the booth.
The 400-mile race around this 1.5-mile oval will last for 267 laps split up into three stages ending on the following laps: 80-165-267.
As for an average Las Vegas spring race, it looks something like this: 6 cautions for 33 caution laps, 19 lead changes, 3,185 green-flag passes (or 13.6 per lap), and a race time from green flag to checkered flag of 2 hours and 55 minutes.
Over the last 10 spring races at LVMS, only two of those events have gone into NASCAR Overtime, but both instances have happened in the past three races. That said, the average lap of final caution falls on lap 223 or 45 laps from the finish.
For today’s starting lineup, click here.
Writer’s Pick
Last week’s writer’s pick for Phoenix was Ryan Blaney. While running in the top-10 late in the race, Blaney’s engine expired, saddling the 2023 Cup champion with a 28th-place result.
This week, I’m picking his best friend: Bubba Wallace.
A surface-level look at Wallace’s results at this track might dissuade some from picking him, but the finish hardly tells the full story of a race.
Since the start of the NextGen era, Bubba has just one top-5 at Vegas, but he scored stage points in every race but one: last year’s spring race where a tire refused to come off of his Toyota Camry, trapping him in pit road until his team was able to rip it away from the hub.
His 20th-place starting position could sway people from putting their faith in the 23XI racer. I’m inclined to believe the second-fastest driver in Saturday’s practice can wheel his car to the front with time and patience.
(Top Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
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