NASCAR Las Vegas Motor Speedway
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At Auto Club Speedway earlier in February, the first race of NASCAR's west coast swing was an action-packed one from start to finish. Kyle Larson took the lead from Daniel Suarez with two laps to go and then held off Austin Dillon to score his first win of the year.

Now, the third race of the season has a tough act to follow as the Cup Series moves on to Sin City and the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The first 1.5-mile D-shaped oval of the season, Las Vegas has become one of the more popular venues on the NASCAR schedule thanks to its long-standing presence in one of America's most robust entertainment markets. The Cup Series now makes two stops annually in Las Vegas, with the first trip last year foreshadowing what would define the 2021 season: Las Vegas was the site of Kyle Larson's first win of the season, and he would proceed to win a total of 10 en route to his first championship.

How to watch the NASCAR Cup Series at Las Vegas

Date: Sunday, March 6
Time: 3:30 p.m. ET
TV: FOX
Stream: fuboTV (try for free)

What to watch for during the race

  • Tire problems?: In spite of the rave reviews that accompanied last week's race at Fontana, a problem with the Next Gen car that was far from insignificant ended up rearing its head. With the weekend featuring a copious amount of self-spins, a number of drivers found their cars completely disabled after flatspotting their tires, as the lack of an inner liner on the Next Gen tire led to cars coming to rest with their underside touching the surface of the racetrack. This led to a number of drivers losing laps and having their races ruined in incidents where they would have simply driven back to the pits for new tires in years' past.

    It was, put simply, a major annoyance for drivers and fans, and something NASCAR took note of. According to a report by Dustin Long of NBC Sports, NASCAR will stick this weekend with the temporary measure of towing cars with flatspotted tires back to the pits while seeking solutions to a problem that has already perturbed drivers.

  • Toyota to fix troubles: While the pain of tire problems was felt throughout the field, a very specific issue plagued the Toyota teams last weekend: Due to high winds and dusty conditions, the Toyotas in the field took the step of installing a thick screen in front of the radiator to prevent dust from accumulating and overheating the engine. The trouble was, the screens ended up working too well, resulting in overheating issues that choked down horsepower in the six Toyota-supported entries in the field and led to them having to spend extra time blowing out debris on every pit stop.

    That led to a day that was hardly the best for Toyota, as only one of their cars (Kurt Busch in eighth) ended up in the Top 10. This weekend, the Toyotas of Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing are seeking to move past their gaffe.

    "No question, we embarrassed ourselves in California. Flat out, simple as that," Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson told Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic on Wednesday. "... All in all, it was a crap day."

  • New practice session: Speaking to The Athletic, Wilson expressed his belief that it would have helped for teams to have more than 15 minutes of practice time in the leadup to last weekend's race. Evidently, NASCAR has heeded teams' desire for extended track time by making an alteration to its new condensed practice and qualifying format: After cars were split into two groups for a pair of 15-minute practice sessions last week, NASCAR will now hold one 35-minute practice session for all cars that will lead into qualifying.

  • Looking to the future: Las Vegas has come to be regarded as the first annual test of which teams and drivers are strong on the 1.5-mile aerodynamically-sensitive ovals that have a significant presence on NASCAR's schedule. With that in mind, a lot of stock is put into Vegas' spring race, which has become a fairly good predictor of who will be a contender in the season at large.

    Recent winners of the spring race at Las Vegas include Kyle Larson (2021), Joey Logano (2019, 2020), Kevin Harvick (2018) and Martin Truex Jr. (2017). Of that group, all but Logano in 2019 ended up making the Championship 4 at season's end. Larson and Truex went on to win the championship in their respective years.

Pick to Win

(Odds via Caesars Sportsbook)

Chase Elliott (+700): Chase Elliott's run at Fontana ended up being defined by his late race run-in with teammate Kyle Larson, where Elliott went from staging a daring three-wide pass for the lead to getting blocked by Larson into the outside wall. That overshadowed a day where Elliott demonstrated terrific raw speed, leading 12 laps and battling back from wall contact and a self-spin out of the front to get back in the fight for the win by race's end.

The last time Elliott was at Las Vegas, he ran down race leader Denny Hamlin in the final laps but was unable to make the winning move, coming home second at the finish. Those circumstances make Elliott a sound pick for this weekend, as evidenced by him having the second-best odds to win at +700.