South Point 400: Chase Briscoe dominates Las Vegas Chase race

LAS VEGAS — Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe put on a clinic in the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leading 175 of 267 laps and sweeping both stages in one of the most dominant performances of his NASCAR Cup Series career.

The driver of the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota, who fell all the way down to ninth in The Chase standings, used a 75-point effort in Sin City to climb back up to sixth.

“It was definitely uneasy on the long run,” Briscoe said. “On the short run, I felt phenomenal. I don’t know what else I could have needed. After 30 or so laps, I would kind of be hanging on. It would seem like even if I could stretch it even four seconds, they would ultimately catch me right before we pitted. I’ll be honest, with 35 to go, I was thinking I don’t know if I am going to be able to pull this off after leading all day.

“James (Small, crew chief) made an adjustment at the end and that was a huge deal there. It was definitely an exciting race from my point of view. I know the middle part, maybe not so much, but at the end it was like cat-and-mouse game of a couple of different guys, and then there was that group of seven or eight lap cars. It is really cool to get Bass Pro Shops, Toyota, Free Bird, Columbia Bank, Mobil 1, Zep, Lance Crackers, WIX Filters — all of our partners in Victory Lane. It has not been a terrible year, but it hasn’t been the year we’ve wanted, so this is really cool.”

Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson’s No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet was sporting a special throwback paint scheme honoring the late Kyle Busch as NASCAR returned to Busch’s home track for the first time since his passing. Larson, who is statistically the best driver in NASCAR at Las Vegas, battled issues all race long. However, Larson’s No. 5 team was able to fix those issues as the two-time Cup Series champion drove all the way up into second.

Larson was within feet of passing Briscoe on the final lap before slamming the outside wall and destroying his race car in Turn 4. The points leader still finished second, his fifth straight top five and fourth straight top-two finish.

“It was a fight all day long for this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team,” Larson said. “I was surprised about how far off we were there in that first run. I was just doing all I could to hold onto it and get to the pit stop. Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) said it was going to be a lengthy pit stop, but I didn’t know it was going to be that long. We came out a lap down. I think, thankfully, that caution came out and we could take the wave around. I think that really saved us from being stuck a lap down a lot longer. My car got better, but getting track position was just difficult. We just chipped away at it all race long. We had a good green flag pit cycle, and I could tell I was gaining on him (Chase Briscoe, race winner) pretty quickly.

“I just tried to stay patient, but my tires were getting kind of burnt off by the time I got there. I did what I could to try and win. We did a decent job with it, but I was just trying to push it through (Turns) three and four to build some momentum at him and try to get by him down the straightaway. I just got really loose and overcorrected it into the wall. Thankfully, I was able to limp it home. It got exciting, for sure. I wish I could have won in this paint scheme while honoring Kyle because that would have been in very Kyle Busch fashion, but again, it was a great fight by this team.”

23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick also had an up-and-down day as he battled voltage issues for most of the race. That did not slow down Reddick, though, as the five-time 2026 season race winner drove up to third before the end.

“That pretty much sums up what today was like,” Reddick said when asked about the closing laps. “Just one thing after another for us. Just really proud of everyone’s effort on this Jordan Brand Toyota Camry. We didn’t lose a lap changing the battery there, and we able to drive back to the front — it just took too long. It put us in a spot where we had to be perfect on that final run, and unfortunately, we had some more mistakes and we came out behind the 5 (Kyle Larson) after we got by him in the first part of that run. I think ultimately that was the difference. If we could have stayed ahead of him leaving pit road, I think we get to those cars first and maybe don’t burn up as much. I think we could have won today.”

Results from the 2026 South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

There were no DNFs in the 2026 South Point 400, as every car finished the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In addition, there were also no DNFs in this year’s Las Vegas spring race, as well as the Kansas spring race and Sonoma Raceway.

Denny Hamlin seemed to be on pace for another impressive intermediate track race before he spun out on his own with three laps remaining in Stage 1. From there, Hamlin was never able to show the same pace he had as he suffered some damage during the single-car spin. Hamlin ended up in 16th, now 40 points behind championship leader Kyle Larson.

Austin Cindric, who earned his first career top five on a 1.5-mile track at Kansas last week, followed up that performance with another top-five finish (fourth) on an intermediate track.

“Yeah, obviously we overcame a bit today, but to come up with a solid finish in our Autotrader Ford Mustang,” Cindric said. “I feel like we had a car that was pretty good and close to capable of winning today. There was a lot of deja vu from last week with the leaders fighting for the win and still giving us a shot there, but I’m just proud of everybody on the 2 car. We were able to bring two really fast cars two weeks in a row and we’re really starting to execute really well throughout this stretch.”

Chase drivers occupied 14 of the top 17 finishing spots, with Shane van Gisbergen (ninth), Alex Bowman (11th) and AJ Allmendinger (15th) being the top non-Chase drivers. Christopher Bell (23rd), who lost power steering, and Ryan Preece (28th) were the two Chase drivers not inside the top 17.

Bell was still able to score 31 points despite the poor finish as he was second in Stage 1 and third in Stage 2 before his power steering issues.

For the first time in team history, Joe Gibbs Racing had all four of their Toyotas start 1-2-3-4.

Both NASCAR Cup Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races had Bass Pro Shops and HendrickCars.com as the primary sponsors of the top two finishers.

Chase Driver Las Vegas Results

• Chase Briscoe (1st)
• Kyle Larson (2nd)
• Tyler Reddick (3rd)
• Austin Cindric (4th)
• Ryan Blaney (5th)
• William Byron (6th)
• Chase Elliott (7th)
• Bubba Wallace (8th)
• Joey Logano (10th)
• Carson Hocevar (12th)
• Chris Buescher (13th)
• Daniel Suárez (14th)
• Denny Hamlin (16th)
• Ty Gibbs (17th)
• Christopher Bell (23rd)
• Ryan Preece (28th)

Chase Standings Post-Las Vegas

GRID Ranking

The 2026 GRID Ranking is the 10th year of the world’s premier motorsports ranking system, which was initially released on Sunday, April 5.
The official ranking includes drivers participating in seven racing series (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, WRC, Supercars, MotoGP). Each driver earns GRID Ratings, which help determine their seeding in the GRID Ranking.

DRIVER	OLD RATING	PREVIOUS RANKING	MOST RECENT FINISH	NEW RATING	NEW RANKING
Denny Hamlin	12.79	6th	16th	N/A	N/A
Tyler Reddick	11.46	14th	3rd	N/A	N/A
Christopher Bell	11.08	17th	23rd	N/A	N/A
Kyle Larson	10.46	20th	2nd	N/A	N/A
Ty Gibbs	10.03	24th	17th	N/A	N/A

Week 27 of the GRID Ranking:

*Week 27 of the GRID Ranking will be updated in the next few days.*

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Sunday, Oct. 11. Coverage begins at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network.

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