Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski battled for the lead and eventual win in the closing laps of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday. For Keselowski, the win would've been a second-straight 2019 victory after he won a week earlier at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and a second-consecutive at LVMS after winning there last September. Instead, Logano drove his #22 Pennzoil-sponsored car to his 22nd-career Cup Series win in the Pennzoil 400.
"What a great race,” Logano said. “Brad and I were so evenly matched, and you just can't pull away. My heart is still running.”
Keselowski followed his Atlanta win with a runner-up showing in Las Vegas.
“I'd like to have one more lap,” Keselowski said. “It was a good battle, and we were both fighting really hard at the top. It seemed like it came down to what the lapped cars were going to do.”
The teammates were first and second after the final round of pit stops completed with 41 laps to go. Keselowski took the lead from Logano with 28 to go, but with 24 laps remaining, Logano took his race-winning final lead of the race.
Kyle Busch finished third in his hometown race after overcoming a pit-road speeding penalty about halfway through the race.
“If we didn’t have the speeding penalty on pit road, we would have won this race, but the guys gave me a great piece, and we were certainly fast there at the end,” Busch said. We were running some of them leaders down and closing in on them running 31-flats, and once I got within the vicinity of them, I just stalled out to 31.40s and couldn’t go any faster in order to gain on them anymore. I would try to go low; they would go low. Try to go high, and they go high, and it’s just an air game. Very frustrating, but overall we had a really fast car. The M&M’s Camry was good and driver threw it away.”
Defending Pennzoil 400 winner Kevin Harvick was fourth, and Kurt Busch was fifth.
Harvick and Logano dominated the race, with Harvick leading a race-high 88 of the 267 laps that made up the race and Logano leading 86. They were also the winners of the two 80-lap stages that made up the first 160 laps of the race, with Harvick winning the first stage and Logano the second.
The race ran incident-free. As a result, the yellow flag waved only twice for scheduled cautions that divided the race distance into its three stages. With the lengthy green-flag runs, each stage included a cycle of green-flag pit stops.
Harvick started on the pole and led the first 43 laps before the first cycle of stops. After a lengthy cycle, He returned to the lead with about to laps remaining in the opening stage.
Harvick lost three positions on pit road between the first two stages, one of those to Keselowski after Keselowski took only two tires. After the two-tire stop, Keselowski got out of the pits first and restarted with the lead. He was passed by Logano and Kyle Busch on lap 97, and on lap 121, Busch took the lead.
When the second green-flag cycle of stops completed late in the second stage, Logano was up front and Busch was off the lead lap after his speeding penalty.
Kurt Busch made his green-flag stop late in the second stage, enabling to inherit the lead to restart the final stage up front after staying out.
“I was really happy that we were able to stay out long,” Busch said. ”Around the second stage, we didn’t get any stage points today, but it positioned us well to make a run at the checkers, and we got fifth today. The power of those first few guys, altogether, it’s aero, it’s engine, it’s handling, and that is what we have to work on. I’m really happy with two top-fives to start the year. We are playing it smart. We haven’t had any penalties, and we will just keep chipping away at it. So good day for our Chevy. I think we might be top Chevy again.”
Harvick took the lead from Busch with 80 laps remaining and held on to the position until the final round of pit stops.
Finishing sixth through 10th were Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Aric Almirola, Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin.
