The 7X Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson is the only driver (current or former) to have won multiple times at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a season right after winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship (2007, 2010). He also remains the only driver to win races at the 1.5-mile oval and the championship in the same season. Although he did that thrice in 2006, 2007, and 2010, the list of his feats at the Nevadan racetrack still goes on.
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Perhaps the most exhilarating of all of them is when the Hall of Famer took the closest finish at the LVMS. Throwback to 2006. For the fans on the grandstands, initially, it seemed like Matt Kenseth would easily take home the victory.
But soon, they were forced to rethink. Over the closing laps, the then-HMS star’s Chevy throttled at its fullest fury and passed Kenseth barely yards before the start-finish line. Remarkably, the margin of victory was 0.045 of a second.
The history of Hendrick Motorsports at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
The Chevy team has always been strong at LVMS. Just last season, Hendrick Motorsports led 375 of 538 laps at the racetrack which amounts to about a 70 percent success rate. On that note, let’s take a look at how they have been at this track over the last two decades.
Just in 2001, Mr. Hendrick’s team won nine points-paying races in Las Vegas. The Vice Chairman (Jeff Gordon) himself won there in 2001, and that victory was followed by four other triumphs through the able hands of Jimmie Johnson between 2005 and 2010, as said before.
Fast forward to 2021. Kyle Larson was just back from what was perhaps the biggest slump in his career and joined Mr. H’s team. It didn’t take him long to prove his worth as he won just the fourth event of the season, which was at LVMS, and also took home the Championship trophy that year. That win at Las Vegas was his first win for HMS and also Cliff Daniels’ first victory as Larson’s crew chief.
That’s not all. Everybody knows how Larson won the 2023 event and became the first driver to book a spot in Championship 4. Although Larson seems to be one of the winningest drivers at Las Vegas, Alex Bowman and William Byron have also won races here in 2022 and 2023, respectively
