Like every year, the third race of the season marks the start of NASCAR heads west. It kicks off with a trip to Vegas were the gambling is hot and the racing can be even hotter at times. This is a new name for the race this year, Pennzoil 400 instead of the Kobalt 400 like the last few years. It’s the same distance and same track though.

The 1.5-mile layout is a tri-oval design with progressive banking in the turns that goes from 12 degrees to 20 degrees the closer you get to the outside wall. Compared to Atlanta last week, this track is a lot smoother surface and it doesn’t eat tires quite as quickly at Atlanta is known to do. That being said, Goodyear has stated that the tires they are supplying this week will lay down rubber on the track and effect the grip level as the green-flag runs continue. As was seen in practice where Kyle Larson had a 1.5 second drop off between his fastest and slowest lap over a 41-lap run. There have been fewer than eight cautions in each of the last eight races (except one with exactly eight breaks) here at Las Vegas and each of those races had 36 or less caution laps in them. So all of that means there are quite a few green-flag runs during the race.

Laps led here over the last four races have been pretty well taken up by five drivers with 153 or more laps up front and one other with 90. The rest of the field just has handfuls in that span. So when looking at lineups, it’s pretty typical to have one or two drivers dominate that category each race. Fastest laps are generally a crapshoot but can be partially determined by who has the fastest cars in practice over shorter and longer runs respectively.

The weather has played an important role in practice as the wind gusts were consistently in the 25+ mph range and they will be 1/3 of that come the race on Sunday so cars may react differently balance and handling-wise given the change in the wind conditions and what they though they had in their setup.

Stacks

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