Story By: SAM MAHONEY / TOYOTA RACING – LAS VEGAS, NV – Tyler Reddick led Toyota with a runner-up finish in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon. Reddick finished second in both of the first two stages and closed late on race winner Kyle Larson, before coming up just short of the victory.
Ty Gibbs added his first top-five and second top-10 in first three races this season as the reigning Rookie of the Year battled through transmission issues throughout the second half of the race to earn a Vegas-best fifth-place finish. Gibbs’ teammates Martin Truex Jr. (seventh) and Denny Hamlin (eighth) joined him inside the top-10, while Erik Jones earned points in the second stage and delivered a solid top-15 finish in LEGACY MOTOR CLUB’s first mile-in-a-half start in Toyota Camry XSEs.
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Race 3 of 36 – 400.5 miles, 267 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Kyle Larson*
2nd, TYLER REDDICK
3rd, Ryan Blaney*
4th, Ross Chastain*
5th, TY GIBBS
7th, MARTIN TRUEX, JR.
8th, DENNY HAMLIN
14th, ERIK JONES
22nd, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
33rd, CHRISTOPHER BELL
35th, BUBBA WALLACE
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 Nasty Beast Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
Finishing Position: 2nd
How frustrating is it to come so close to a win today?
“Yeah, it’s just the Next Gen racing game, right? Get the lead and got to hold onto it. Yeah, Kyle (Larson) did a really good job there taking away pretty much every option I had there to close the gap. He seemed pretty good in the middle and I was obviously really good on the bottom, and he just never let me have it, right? I kept trying to run higher and higher and you know, he’s kind of running in the middle of the race track, which is pretty efficient to block both lanes. Every time I sort of got close, I mean, we’re running just wide open enough in turn one and two, you can kind of defend pretty well. It’s frustrating. I feel like we were never up front really all day long, until it got to the stage ends. We had a really good Nasty Beast Toyota Camry. Just stupid mistakes on pit road. Same shit, different year, right? Kind of frustrating. We’ll continue to work on it, but a good rebound for our team today.”
Sometimes second can be good, and sometimes it’s a bad day. On the radio, it sounds like it was the latter. Is that correct?
“Second sucks that is for sure, but we had a really fast Nasty Beast Toyota Camry. I mean, we should have been battling up there in the front more than we were today. Just put us behind, unfortunately, and had to battle through that all day. As the field got better, it got harder to get back to the front as quick. You have to run up front all day long, and when asked about what we need to do to get better, that’s the very thing, and we didn’t do it today.”
What did you need to get Kyle Larson there in the end?
“We were pretty evenly matched, so I don’t know if there was anything that I really could’ve done to get around him. He would have had to make a big mistake or had some traffic kind of knock his wind around. It’s a solid effort for our team, that’s how we need to run, but I don’t like running second.”
TY GIBBS, No. 54 He Gets Us Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 5th
What was your race like today, overcoming early adversity with a strong race car?
“Yeah, I kind of stuck us in a hole there and we broke the transmission, which is kind of unfortunate that has to happen, that’s just part of it and we fought back. I put my team in a hole there. No excuses. And we just kind of fought back and my team gave me a really great He Gets Us Camry XSE this weekend and we drove back to the front. So, just need a little bit more to get to the lead so we can go get a win, but really happy with my team.”
There was lot of unknowns coming into this race with a new car, are you happy with the speed?
“Yeah, really happy. Really excited about what our car is capable of. I feel really happy about what we have.”
ERIK JONES, No. 43 Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB
Finishing Position: 14th
How was your race?
“Pretty up-and-down day. Up-and-down weekend really, fired off the race not where we needed to be, and had to make some really big changes the first three, four stops of the day to get the Dollar Tree Camry better. To salvage a top-15 is good, but we want more, so we will keep working on it.”