NASCAR Officials Happy With New Rules Package, Drivers Still Have Doubts

The Pennzoil 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was a success, according to NASCAR officials, but drivers weren’t as enthusiastic about Sunday’s race and the new rules package. Second-place finisher Brad Keselowski was frustrated about the changes, and was joined by fellow driver Kyle Busch, who finished third.

There were a record 47 green flag passes for the lead and a total of 3,345 green flag passes on the race track. That was achieved despite no caution flags during the entire race.

That, according to Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer was evidence that the changes are working.

“If you look at the first stage, you certainly saw almost two different races,” O’Donnell said. “What we said from the beginning was we wanted to see the best car still win. If you look to turn two or turn three. You wanted to see the leader and second to have the ability to pass. We saw that. In the last stage, a 100 green flag run with no cautions. The top four within 2.4 seconds. I think better, for sure.”

Keselowski said after the race to reporters that he’s not sold yet on the rules package.

“Every driver is going to have a different opinion,” Keselowski said. “That’s what’s going to make it racing.”

O’Donnell said that he doesn’t want drivers, or fans, to judge the changes based on two races.

“We’ve said from the beginning that this is going to be a season that we’re going to analyze,” O’Donnell said. “We’re not going to go every race and say, ‘Was that a good race, was that not?’ I know fans do that, but for us, directionally are you improving upon where you wanted to be. And if you look at last year versus this year, I would say we are.”

Homecoming Spoiled

Busch, who is from Las Vegas, was looking to pull off a rare trifecta at his home track. He won the Gander Outdoors Truck Series race on Friday, and then took the Xfinity Series race on Saturday.

Sunday he came in as one of the favorites at 5/1 to win the Pennzoil 400. His fellow Big Three members from last year, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr., were also at those odds.

Busch is the only person to pull off the three-peat, accomplishing the feat at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2010 and 2017. It looked like Busch was going to pull it off, but a mental mistake cost him the opportunity.

Leading the race in Stage 2, Busch was penalized for entering pit road too fast during his green-flag pit stop and was forced to serve a pass-through penalty. He never was able to regain the lead, and finished third.

“If we didn’t have the speeding penalty on pit road, we would have won this race,” Busch said. “Overall we had a really fast car – the M&M’s Camry was good and the driver threw it away.”

To his credit, Busch took full responsibility.

“I certainly screwed up our day coming to pit road there,” Busch said. “We tried a different brake package for us this weekend — trying to make up time in order to get a bigger jump on the guys behind me coming to pit road there — and I just ruined it for us and we had to come from the back. I think we passed the most cars today, so I think we were the most impressive today, but that doesn’t matter because we don’t have a trophy.”

This Week’s Odds, Pick

The drivers are at ISM Raceway in the Phoenix area for the TicketGuardian 500. This is a 1-mile track and Kevin Harvick is the favorite at 9/4.

We like Kyle Busch, though. His worst finish here is seventh, and we believe he’ll be extra-motivated after throwing away a chance to win last week. He is at 7/2.