After losing a heartbreaker to Kyle Larson at Kansas last week, Chase Briscoe turned the tables to beat his postseason rival in a late battle at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday. Briscoe swept all three stages to grab 75 points and keep himself in contention for the championship title with five races to go in The Chase.
Briscoe took the lead for good shortly after the last round of pit stops as Bubba Wallace hounded him in second, but fell off the pace as Larson started making his way through the front of the field after going a lap down in the first stage with a long pit stop for adjustments.
Larson finally got by Wallace with 11 laps to go and quickly closed the gap to Briscoe as Tyler Reddick passed his teammate, Wallace, and made it a three-way battle for the lead.
Larson got close a couple of times, but couldn’t seal the deal, then ended up in the wall as he made a last-ditch run in the final turn, spun and collected Reddick, who crossed the finish line third sideways skidding through pit lane.
“Just glad I was able to hold on,” Briscoe said after the race. “Last week was not a very fun mental place to be after kind of throwing one away. Yeah, really cool, like I said, to get in victory lane.”
Larson’s result was good enough to hold on to the top spot in the standings and stretch his lead to 40 points over second-place Denny Hamlin, who had a sub-par outing and finished the race 16th. Christopher Bell lost power steering during the race and struggled to a 23rd place finish to put him 55 points behind Larson in third ahead of Joey Logano (-71), Ryan Blaney (-80) and Briscoe (-84).
