Chase Briscoe captures the NASCAR Cup Series trophy at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as Kyle Larson takes his championship lead in the South Point 400.
LAS VEGAS – Chase Briscoe left nothing to chance in the South Point 400 Las Vegas Motorway Sunday afternoon. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver would take two stage wins, leading a race-best 175 of 267 laps and ultimately outscoring the field by 1.376 seconds to take his second NASCAR Cup Series title in mid-90s temperatures.
Chase Briscoe takes the trophy
The dominant victory over series championship leader Kyle Larson comes a week later Briscoe just missed beating Larson in the final laps at Kansas Speedway. It moves Briscoe up two spots in the Chase championship standings with five races remaining in the season. It was redemption for him and the team, he conceded.
“I don’t think I’d be able to get on the (team) plane (if I didn’t win),” the 31-year-old Indiana native and driver of the No. 19 JGR Toyota said with a smile, referring to the outcome of last week’s race.
“Thank you so much for getting this Toyota back on Victory Lane,” he added. “It’s been a tough year, but not the results we necessarily want. So we are happy to bring all our partners back to Victory Lane.”
Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick
Sunday’s margin of victory was larger and a bit misleading as Larson and 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick chased Briscoe down the closing laps, cutting his lead to less than four-tenths of a second with the remainder of the lap, only for Larson to hit the wall directly in front of Brick and last in the final turn corner.
“It was a battle,” said a smiling Larson. “I was surprised how far we were in that first run (of the race).
“My car got better, but the running position was so important and we just pulled away that whole race,” added Larsson. “Just tried to be patient, but my tires were pretty burnt when I got there (to Briscoe). Just tried to do what I could to try to win. I felt like I got up at the right time and did a decent job with it, just trying to push hard in turns 3-4 to build some momentum and I don’t know and I just managed to get really loose on the wall. Redick was able to make it to third as well.
“I wish we could have won with this paint scheme that honored (Las Vegas native) Kyle (Busch),” Larson said of Busch’s first hometown race since the late two-series champion died in May.
Penske teammates Austin Cindrich and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five. Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott were sixth and seventh, followed by 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace, Trackhouse Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen and Team Penske’s Joey Logano. Van Gisbergen is the only top ten finisher not to compete in the Chase.
JGR driver Hamlin, who has won the last two Las Vegas races and started Sunday from the pole position, rallied from the mid-race lap to finish 16th. His teammate Ty Gibbs, whose 24th birthday was Sunday, finished 17th after starting on the front row. An early race pit stop penalty forced him to play catch-up and he finished 17th. Their teammate Christopher Bell, also driving laps in the No. 20 JGR Toyota, finished 23rd and had to wrangle his Camry without power steering for the second half of the race.
“Just trying to get back from track position that we lost and just went up, went into the marbles and spun out,” Hamlin said of his incident. “Obviously the car was damaged, so it wasn’t the same as before.
“We just have to go to the next race and see if we can’t find a way to win. Charlotte will be good for us, but today certainly didn’t live up to our expectations.”
Kyle Larson extended his championship points lead from 26 points to 40 over Briscoe’s JGR teammate Denny Hamlin, who finished 16th.
Bell maintained his third place in the championship standings, but now trails defending series champion Larsson by 55 points. Logano is fourth, 71 points back, and Blaney is fifth, 80 points back.
Next
Five races remain to decide the 2026 Cup. The series returns to action next weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The Bank of America 400 begins at 3 p.m. ET in the US, PRN, on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. This trip to Charlotte marks the first time the fall event will be held on the oval since 2017, when Martin Truex Jr. won the race. Daniel Suarez won a rain-shortened race at the oval this May.
Related to:
