Who… should you be talking about after the race?
Entering the weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, all eyes were on Kyle Larson, who pulled into Sin City with two wins in the last three races at the 1.5-mile track. When people weren’t looking at Larson as the favorite, they were looking at Christopher Bell, who stormed to victory land in the previous three races.
But while Larson led a race-high 61 laps and won the second stage, the driver who had the car to beat when all the cards were on the table was Josh Berry, who battled Daniel Suarez for the lead on the final restart, taking it with 15 to go, and never looking back. Berry drove away to finish with the largest margin of victory at LVMS in the Next Gen era.
The win, one of the most popular with fans this season, marks Berry’s first career victory and the 101st for Wood Brothers Racing. It’s the team’s first win on a 1.5-mile oval since 1993, and the first time the team has won in consecutive seasons since 1986 and 1987.
What a wheelman. pic.twitter.com/SmbbQfzBEN
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 16, 2025
Suarez finished second. Ryan Preece got past William Byron and Ross Chastain on the final run to finish third, with Byron and Chastain rounding out the top five.
Berry’s first career Cup Series win comes in his 53rd start. He’s the first NASCAR weekly racing champion to win at the Cup level.
On the other hand…
Sometimes having the fastest car entering a weekend doesn’t mean success. Ryan Blaney was fast in practice, but a tire failure put him in the wall during the session, and the crash meant starting from the rear on Sunday.
Despite that, Blaney worked his way forward, entering the top 10 in the second stage and finishing that segment in sixth. That was as good as it got for Blaney, however, as he was the victim in a chain reaction crash on a lap 195 restart, which ended the day for the No. 12 Ford.
Blaney was unhurt in his second crash of the weekend, but finished 35th, his second DNF in as many weeks after an engine failure last week at Phoenix Raceway.
What… does this mean for the points standings?
There were no changes in the top three leaving Las Vegas, though Byron extended his point lead over Bell to 29. Tyler Reddick sits 19 points behind Bell in third.
Blaney entered the weekend in fourth, but he tumbled to seventh after his litany of issues. Chase Elliott And Alex Bowman each gained a spot to round out the top five.
Larson jumped five spots, from 11th to sixth, and Berry’s win boosts him from 21st to 13th and gives him a playoff berth to boot.
Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch both took significant hits in the standings. Hamlin slips from seventh to 12th after finishing 25th in Sin City, and hometown hero Busch falls from eighth to 17th after his day ended early following a crash.
As far as the playoff picture is concerned, Byron, Bell and Berry lead the charge with wins this season. Beyond them, five races is far too soon to call anyone else a lock or a favorite.
It’s a little clearer who will need to pick it up significantly or be on the outside looking in. The bottom five drivers who have started every race this year includes Austin Dillon, Noah Gragson, Ty Gibbs, Cole Custer and Cody Ware. Ware is currently 10 points behind Jimmie Johnson, who has just one start in 2025. Among these, Gibbs is the most puzzling, with a best finish of 16th so far this year. He’s also the most likely of this group to rebound, as he’s got top equipment and veteran teammates to lean on.
Where… did he come from?
Seven of the top 10 finishers at LVMS led at least two laps, and nine of them scored stage points. Preece did neither, but he still took home a podium finish with his third-place run, tying a career best. On the final restart, while Chastain and Byron were battling hard for the third spot as Berry and Suarez pulled away, Preece put himself in position to capitalize on any errors. When an opening appeared, he jumped on it, driving to his best finish on 2025.
Preece kicked off the year with some bad luck — he was clipped in the Daytona 500 and flipped, and that was followed with finishes of 18th and 33rd. Preece finished a more encouraging 15th at Phoenix, and led the RFK Racing trio of drivers at LVMS.
"It feels good to have a good finish and not just have cautions fall my way."@RyanPreece_ ties a career-best #NASCAR Cup Series finish of third at Las Vegas, credits many people for supporting him get to RFK.
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) March 17, 2025
📹: @TheBryanNolen pic.twitter.com/9ESc4W1t14
Teammates Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher finished just outside the top 10 in 11th and 13th on Sunday (March 16), marking a solid day for the team. Preece has shown flashes of brilliance in his Cup career, but consistency has eluded him. With the stability of an improving RFK organization behind him, can Preece keep the momentum going?
When… was the moment of truth?
Races can be won or lost on pit road, and this week, pit issues abounded throughout the day.
Loose wheels were one of the most common issues when the Next Gen cars were new in 2022. The single lug isn’t as easy to seat as the graphics make it look, and teams were adjusting to it.
Fast forward three seasons, and the issue faded to an occasional problem that would rear its head every now and then.
Until Sunday (or Saturday (March 15), when Blaney blew a tire and hit the wall in practice), when loose wheels were responsible for two cautions as well as other issues. Chase Briscoe brought out the caution in the first stage after a wheel fell off the No. 19 on a green flag stop. Briscoe served a two-lap penalty and will also have a pair of crew suspended.
Busch lost a wheel in stage two and slammed the wall, also resulting in a yellow flag; his right rear wheel was actually cut in half. The damage sent him behind the wall for repairs. In addition, Austin Cindric was forced to pit twice under the first stage break when he suspected a loose wheel.
.@KyleBusch's detached wheel was the 400th across the 3 @NASCAR National Touring Series.
— Seth Eggert (@SethEggert91) March 16, 2025
Last time (on record) we had this many that were loose (and/or detached), regardless if they came off, looks to be… @TXMotorSpeedway 2023.#NASCAR | #Pennzoil400 https://t.co/y6Wt6laweD
Then, Christopher Bell wound up with a penalty for pitting outside his pit box as a loose wheel coming out of his box was quickly diagnosed, and he stopped in Briscoe’s pit box farther up pit road so a tire changer for the No. 19 could tighten the wheel. Bell’s penalty was considerably less than he would have received had the wheel fallen off, so the quick thinking of his team saved the day.
Tire issues weren’t the only problem during the race as pit woes in general hampered teams’ days. Speeding penalties cost several drivers track position. Carson Hocevar tangled with Gibbs in the pits, spinning Gibbs around. A slow stop on the final round of stops ended Joey Logano’s chances.
The race wasn’t won in the pits, but it may well have been lost there.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
Homestead-Miami Speedway moves from the playoffs to the spring on this year’s NASCAR schedule, and it comes at just the right time for the two winningest active drivers at the track.
Hamlin and Busch have both shown speed this year, but both had issues at Las Vegas that dropped them out of the top 10 in driver points. However, as the only two active drivers with multiple wins at Homestead, both drivers will be looking for a rebound.
Homestead in general favors veteran drivers. With just one race a year, even Reddick and Bell, who top the series in average finish at the track with five starts there each, aren’t new to the track or the Cup Series.
Looking for a dark horse pick? Look at another driver in desperate need of a good finish in 2025: Austin Dillon. His 12.6 average finish at Homestead makes it his best track in terms of consistently good results, and it’s good enough for sixth among full-time Cup drivers.
How… did this race stack up?
By the numbers, the latest edition at LVMS didn’t have the most exciting finish, though it may be one of the most popular.
Berry finished 11th in his only other LVMS Cup start, raising his average finish to 5.5. Berry started seventh; the lowest start by a LVMS winner came from Matt Kenseth, who started 25th in 2004. Berry is the 19th different winner at LVMS.
The 1.358-second margin of victory is the largest at LVMS in NASCAR’s Next Gen era, and the only time to date that a driver in the Next Gen has won by a second or more. That’s a long way from the 9.1-second gap between winner Kenseth and runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2003.
The closest margin at LVMS in the Next Gen era was .082 seconds, when Larson nipped Bell at the line in October of 2023. The Next Gen has seen closer finishes at the mile and a half tracks, with no finish prior to Sunday seeing cars separated by more than .817 seconds (Logano over Chastain in the fall of ‘22), but the closest finish overall at LVMS was in the lone 2006 event, when Johnson took the checkers over Kenseth by .045 seconds.
This week’s race featured a track record 32 lead changes (eclipsing the set in 2007) and nine cautions, including the two stage cautions, falling short of the record of 14 set in 2009.
Overall, Sunday’s race won’t go down as one of the most memorable for the racing. The finish wasn’t close, and the problems in the pits overshadowed what was happening on track for too much of the day.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.