Off to the races: Key storylines at NASCAR’s Pennzoil 400 in Las Vegas

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 2 a.m.

Professional sports have overtaken Las Vegas in recent years, with more events — and local teams — coming to town than most can reasonably follow. NASCAR sometimes seems to get lost in the shuffle, even though the nation’s largest auto racing organization was perhaps the first top-tier pro sport to embrace our Valley.

NASCAR has brought at least one race in its Cup Series — the highest level of competition — to Las Vegas Motor Speedway every year since the track opened in 1998. And for the sixth consecutive time, the speedway will host a pair of NASCAR weekends during the 2023 season.

The first starts Friday, March 3, with the Victoria’s Voice Foundation 200 Truck Series event, and ends Sunday, March 5, with the Pennzoil 400 Cup Series race.

NASCAR is no longer the biggest game in town; local attendance figures are one measure of its declining presence. The Speedway’s capacity has twice been downsized, from a high of 140,000 seats to its current total of 80,000.

But this year’s first NASCAR stop—the second will take place in October during the sport’s playoffs — is a good opportunity to start paying attention again, if not get back into the grandstands themselves.

It’s the third stop on NASCAR’s 2023 schedule, and there’s plenty of intrigue to go around at the start of a new season. Here are four reasons why the Pennzoil 400 will be worth watching when the drivers start their engines at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.

1. Newfound parity

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the annual season-opening Daytona 500 on February 19, becoming the 20th driver since the start of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season to capture a checkered flag. That’s a near-unprecedented number of different winners over the course of one calendar year.

Superspeedways like Daytona notoriously level the playing field for the entire entry list more than a traditional-type course like Las Vegas, but there’s still arguably more competition at every track than ever before. It makes for a more exciting racing environment, part of

NASCAR’s master plan when it introduced “the Next Gen car” at the start of the 2022 season.

That new car has provided teams with fewer resources a better chance to compete against goliaths of the sport like Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet), Team Penske (Ford) and Joe Gibbs Racing (Toyota).

In past years, it might have been easy to narrow the potential list of Las Vegas winners down to five or six drivers, but that’s no longer the case.

2. A Rowdy restart

A two-time NASCAR Cup series champion and 60-time Cup series race winner, 37-year-old Kyle “Rowdy” Busch is the most accomplished driver ever to hail from Las Vegas. But the Durango High graduate is entering a new phase of his career in 2023.

Busch parted ways with Joe Gibbs Racing after 15 years following last season. The organization cited the exit of Busch’s longtime sponsor, M&Ms, as a reason for not renewing his contract, but fans rolled their eyes at that when team owner Joe Gibbs’ grandson, Ty Gibbs, predictably filled Busch’s spot.

Bush was expected to be less competitive this season with Richard Childress Racing (Chevrolet), but so far, the opposite has played out. He’s been the fastest driver in the Cup series through two races.

Bush picked up a victory in the second race of the year, February 26 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, after narrowly missing at the Daytona 500. Busch led at the 500-mile mark and bemoaned that he would have won had it not been for a series of late wrecks that prolonged the race.

The fiery Busch is cherishing the opportunity to prove his naysayers wrong and would love for it to continue in his hometown.

3. A rookie debut

Ty Gibbs is one of just two rookies in the Cup Series this season. The other? Noah Gragson, who grew up in Las Vegas and began his career in local races at the speedway. The 24-year-old Bishop Gorman High graduate gets a well-deserved promotion to the Cup Series after dominating the secondary Xfinity Series the past two years.

Gragson won 13 races in the Xfinity Series, falling just short of winning the championship with a second-place finish behind Ty Gibbs in 2022 and a third-place showing in 2021. Gragson is already a polarizing figure in racing circles due to a confrontational and outspoken attitude, not unlike the one for which Busch has been known throughout his career.

Gragson never seems intimidated, even with this year’s major step up to the big show. He’ll be driving the No. 42 car for the rebranded Legacy Motor Club (Chevrolet), majority-owned by Allegiant Air CEO Maury Gallagher and recently retired NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson.

4. The champion in his element

Joey Logano might not be a Southern Nevada product, but he sure seems at home at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The 32-year-old Team Penske driver won for the third time in Las Vegas during the track’s most recent race in last October as part of the Cup Series playoffs.

Logano, who hails from Middletown, Connecticut, went on to win again three weeks later at the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race in Phoenix, capturing his second career title.

In the Las Vegas record books, only Jimmie Johnson sits above Logano with four career wins. It feels like only a matter of time before Logano ties Johnson’s all-time mark, given how he has performed in Las Vegas. In 18 career appearances here, he has finished outside of the top 10 just six times. Logano also has one runner-up and three fourth-place finishes to go with his trio of wins.

He’ll once again be driving a Pennzoil-branded car this season, and he just might be the man to beat in the Pennzoil 400.

This story originally appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.