Date: March 3, 2024
Event: Las Vegas 400 (Round 3 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Las Vegas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval)
Format: 267 laps, broken into three stages (80 laps/85 laps/102 laps)
SHR Finish:
– Noah Gragson (Started 30th, Finished 6th / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
– Josh Berry (Started 26th, Finished 20th / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
– Chase Briscoe (Started 6th, Finished 21st / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
– Ryan Preece (Started 36th, Finished 23rd / Running, completed 267 of 267 laps)
SHR Points:
– Chase Briscoe (20th with 53 points, 65 out of first)
– Josh Berry (30th with 37 points, 81 out of first)
– Noah Gragson (34th with 25 points, 93 out of first)
– Ryan Preece (36th with 14 points, 104 out of first)
SHR Notes:
– Gragson earned his second top-10 of the season and his first top-10 in three career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Las Vegas.
– This was Gragson’s best finish so far this year. His previous best was ninth, earned in the season-opening Daytona 500.
– Gragson’s sixth-place result bettered his previous best finish at Las Vegas 11th, earned in October 2022.
– This was Berry’s best finish so far this year. His previous best was 25th, earned in the season-opening Daytona 500.
– Berry’s 20th-place result bettered his previous best finish at Las Vegas – 29th, earned last March.
– Briscoe led one lap, increasing his laps-led total at Las Vegas to seven.
Sound Bites:
“These guys are good. It feels good to do it in front of the hometown crowd. I was battling Ty (Gibbs) and Ross (Chastain) there at the end for a top-five. I really wanted a top-five, but coming from 30th to sixth, I’m just really proud of everyone’s effort. This Mustang Dark Horse is bitchin’. It’s fast and it’s been really good. This compared to last year just has a lot more speed. You can go where you want. We’ve got a good pit crew and just a good team. We’re going to take this and get back into the positives in points and just keep on working, keep on learning and becoming better than we were yesterday and just keep that attitude. I think we’ve got the tightest group in the garage. They’re awesome to work with and I love every one of them.” – Noah Gragson, driver of the No. 10 Fanttik Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“I think we saw a lot of potential with the new (Ford Mustang Dark Horse) body style. Definitely each run it seemed like as a company, one of our cars was stronger than the other. But we learned a lot and our car definitely had some speed. We’ve just got to work on fine-tuning it and I need to work on starting just a little bit closer to the front, and all of those things start to compound and we have a little bit better of a day. But overall I thought we were solid.” – Josh Berry, driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1/Take 5 Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“Before (the contact with Ryan Blaney), I thought our car was pretty good. We weren’t good enough to win, I didn’t think, but we were definitely a fifth- to 10th-place car fairly easily. I was able to pass a lot of cars. That second run of the race, we kind of went backward, but after that we were able to continue to go forward and I was really happy with the way my car was driving. After the contact, as soon as it happened, I went into the next corner and we were a half a second slower that lap and just continued to stay a half a second slower than we had been for the rest of the race. Kind of head-scratching, not really sure what happened as far as why we lost a half a second. Definitely a tough one to swallow when we had that good of a car – we definitely had a top-10 car and ended up finishing 21st. That part’s kind of frustrating, but we’re going to Phoenix where we’ve had speed in the past and see if we can just get a better run.” – Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“We just did what we could with what we had for the day. Without practice, really, what we had was really what it was going to be. That’s that.” – Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Shriners Children’s 500k on Sunday, March 10 at Phoenix Raceway. The race begins at 3:30 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FOX and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
