Who Will Cash in a Las Vegas Jackpot with the Pennzoil 400?

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NASCAR

Stratta’s Six: Who Will be the Lucky one in Las Vegas Victory Lane?

Race five of the 2026 NASCAR campaign is the first intermediate oval of the season from Sin City. Recent memory has seen Las Vegas Motor Speedway become the boulevard of dreams for NASCAR’s top drivers. Five of the last seven races at this track have been dominated by today’s winningest drivers. One of these exceptions was last year’s spring race, which saw Josh Berry’s maiden Cup win. Who can be out front when it counts this time and take a winning gamble on Sunday? Here are a few who hope to leave the Pennzoil 400 with a winning hand.

Kyle Larson

Las Vegas Motor Speedway has a case for Kyle Larson’s most consistent active track. Across his last 10 starts here, Larson has three wins, three runner-up finishes, and only one result worse than 11th. Last year, however, he was surprisingly empty-handed despite almost 200 laps led in both races. Larson eyes a chance to get the 5 team back on their typical winning path.

“Las Vegas is always a track I look forward to,” Larson said. “It’s our first real chance in the season to see where we stack up on a mile-and-a-half. With the new Chevy body, there’s still a lot we’re learning. So getting laps at a place like Vegas will be really valuable for our No. 5 team.”

October 2022 was the last time when Larson failed to lead at Las Vegas. His stellar six-race streak since then includes two wins and two 2nd-places. To put it bluntly, Larson is a deserved favorite this weekend, looking to tie the record as Las Vegas’ winningest man. Do not be surprised if the No. 5 Chevrolet finds the lead and puts up a monster Sunday performance. The reigning Cup champion is still riding a 28-race losing drought he desperately wants to end.

Denny Hamlin

Beating Larson to last fall’s Las Vegas checkers was Denny Hamlin in a very emotion-fueled victory. This marked Las Vegas win number two for driver No. 11. Hamlin’s likewise seen a top-10 in eight of his last 11 Nevada showings. Rallying late to the top spot here just five months ago, Hamlin hopes for similar fortune this weekend.

“We got Vegas coming up,” Hamlin said. “It’s another test, you know. Hopefully, we’ll get a little better result than what we had this week. We’ll see what we got. We had really kind of fallen off. When I say we fell off the map, that’s that means like we’re not we’re not in the top five. We’re top 10. Just weren’t very good there for the few races before the last fall race. And then all of a sudden we I mean we hit it really well. So hopefully we do that again.”

Las Vegas in the fall marked Hamlin’s highly celebrated 60th career Cup triumph, a win he dedicated to his father. Few have been as consistently fast around the Sin City oval in recent memory as the 11. Hamlin now has a chance at back-to-back show-stopping runs. Coming off a Phoenix top-five, momentum could be in the 11 camp for another banner desert day.

Joey Logano

Tied with Jimmie Johnson at a record four Las Vegas wins, Joey Logano looks to be in a class of one after this weekend. Each of Logano’s desert triumphs have come in the last 14 starts, evenly split between spring and fall. Las Vegas has become a championship lynchpin for the 22 team. Each of their last two titles have included a lucky roll of the dice here. Phoenix a week ago saw the 22 lead early before wrecking out. Moving on from that, Logano eyes a return trip to a very familiar victory lane this time around.

“Vegas has just been a good one,” Logano said. “I think our Ford Mustangs have always been fairly strong there and it’s a track that seems like it kind of fits my style. We’ve been able to figure out how to move around that racetrack fairly well from top to bottom. We think that’s opened up our options. We’ve won there in completely different ways almost every time. Whether it’s speed, strategy, tires at the end, staying out at the end, fuel mileage. It seems like we’ve gotten to the end of that one just about every way you can, but it’s been a good place.”

Laps led in four-straight Las Vegas starts and six of his last seven are stats matched by very few anywhere. Team Penske saw a banner weekend-long celebration at Phoenix Raceway between IndyCar and NASCAR victories. Logano, meanwhile, was not one of their victorious drivers. The three-time champion hopes to keep Roger Penske in the winner’s circle with another breakthrough Las Vegas run.

William Byron

Never one to be counted out at Las Vegas is William Byron. Despite only one win here, the No. 24 has a .500 batting average for top-10s across 16 starts, and boasts 337 laps led here. Byron held a commanding lead here in October, before a bizarre pit entry accident with Ty Dillon ended his day in a flash. Had Byron not been taken out there, it could have easily been the 24 in victory lane over the 11. Byron comes into this weekend after a quiet seventh-place day in Phoenix. Driver 24 is eager to return to one of his best tracks and chase another trophy.

“It wasn’t an easy day in Phoenix, but I’m proud of the effort my No. 24 team put in,” Byron said. “To battle back from a flat tire and damage to finish seventh shows our strength as a group. Now we’re heading to Las Vegas and we’ve always had a lot of speed there. Hopefully that’s the case again this weekend and we can really start to stack some big point days.”

As Byron mentioned, the 24 currently sits 11th in points with only one top 10 through 2026’s opening four weeks. Expect each of these metrics to likely change after 400 miles on Sunday. The 24 did see five-straight Las Vegas top-10s before October’s catastrophic crash.

Tyler Reddick

No longer riding a perfect season record, Tyler Reddick still left Phoenix with a very respectable eighth-place run. 23XI Racing’s No. 45 is the only team with four top 10s in 2026. This streak could easily extend past Las Vegas. Although Reddick has yet to win here, he’s seen two top-fives in his last four Las Vegas trips. Altogether, Reddick has six top-10s in 12 starts on the desert track. This includes laps led in eight of the last 10 races here.

The points leader hopes to stay unchallenged atop the provisional Chase grid. Las Vegas is one of Reddick’s most consistent venues on the circuit, allowing team 45 to take an extra gamble or two to chase more winning bonus points. Not long ago, Reddick won a stage here only to flip a few laps later, showing how volatile Las Vegas can be. Reddick will aim to keep all four wheels pointed to victory lane for an unprecedented fourth win in five weeks this year.

Ryan Blaney

The man who ended Tyler Reddick’s perfect 2026 win streak, Ryan Blaney hopes to go back-to-back at Las Vegas. Although Team Penske has seven Las Vegas triumphs, none of them have come from the 12. Blaney’s best desert showing was third in this race two years ago. That marked one of his 10 career Las Vegas top-10s through 19 starts, but was also Blaney’s most recent top-30 finish here. Early accidents have derailed Blaney’s progress in each of the last three Las Vegas showings. Surely this negative trend ends here, right?

Entering Las Vegas on a winning high, Blaney looks to stay undefeated out west and deliver Roger Penske another huge moment. Vaulted up to second in points after Phoenix, Blaney aims to make more inroads on Reddick’s massive lead.

Trying to predict who will win the Pennzoil 400 may be as difficult as guessing where a roulette ball lands. One team’s hand of cards on Sunday will be a winner, but a lot still stands between here and there. The Las Vegas green flag flies Sunday at 4 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. It will be a treat to see if any team has a daring strategy play to possibly steal this victory.

Written by Peter Stratta

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