Through two Cup Series races, it’s safe to say NASCAR’s 2024 season is on the right track.
After William Byron produced a season-opening Daytona 500 victory in Hendrick Motorsports’ first race during its 40th season in the series, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch and Daniel Suarez raced to the checkers exactly like that — three abreast, inside line to frontstretch wall, in that order — at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Suarez came out the winner by 0.003 seconds, the third-closest finish in NASCAR history, and recorded his second career win.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway — the site of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 — has a tough act to follow.
Running third entering Turn 3, Suarez charged on the outside, made his three-wide move and maneuvered his way to the most talked-about finish since Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch, with the two cars leaning on each other and smoke billowing, at Darlington Raceway on March 16, 2003.
Craven’s finish was by a NASCAR-record 0.002 seconds, which Jimmie Johnson matched eight years later by edging Clint Bowyer at Talladega Superspeedway on April 17, 2011.
Of the active Cup drivers, former teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano lead the way in LVMS wins with three apiece. Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. each own two.
For Keselowski, he made news at Atlanta, but it had nothing to do with winning.
The RFK Racing driver and his No. 6 Ford Mustang Dark Horse were involved in a wreck and ended up 33rd, finishing just 218 of the 260 laps.
That stretched the winless skid to 100 races for the 40-year-old Keselowski.
“It’s a shame,” said Keselowski, who ran in the top five and led two laps. “We were in good position. We ran up front most of the day and made good adjustments on the car. (We) weren’t able to make it count with a solid finish I feel like we deserved today. It’s a bummer, but we’re running up front and that’s a good thing. We just weren’t able to finish it off.”
He last went to Victory Lane in the desert on Sept. 16, 2018, when he won for the third time in a string of six LVMS races.
Bubba Wallace is the only driver with two top-10 finishes this season. He was fifth at Daytona and Atlanta to stand fourth in the points race. Martin Truex Jr. has seven consecutive top-10 finishes in Vegas, and 12 top-10s in his last 13 appearances. That includes wins in 2017 and 2019.
Winning just once at his hometown track, 2009 victor Kyle Busch said he does not feel the pressure of coming home.
“You still want to win there every time you go, (it) being the hometown,” the Richard Childress Racing driver said. “I think I have four or five third-place finishes there in the last six or seven races. We’re right there, we just don’t get it.”
In overtime there a year ago, Byron gambled on right-side tires, beat teammate Larson off pit road and passed leader Truex in a two-lap shootout for his first win at the 1.5-mile track.
