What to Make of Penske at Las Vegas

Joey Logano has won 4 Cup races at Las Vegas since 2005, the most of anyone entered Sunday. At Kansas last week he started on the pole, ran inside the top 10 for 191 of the 267 laps and finished 20th. In the same race his Penske teammates had their best mile-and-a-half day of 2026: Austin Cindric finished 2nd and Ryan Blaney finished 5th. That is the question we find most interesting going into the South Point 400. The Fords have struggled on the mile-and-a-halves this year, they showed real speed at Kansas, and it is anybody's guess which version shows up at Las Vegas.

Each of the 3 Penske cars brings a different contradiction. Logano has led 588 laps at Las Vegas across 26 starts with a 9.8 average finish, and his 2026 average finish is 16.0 despite 3 wins and 725 laps led. He sits 4th in the Chase with 2,215 points, 67 behind Kyle Larson, with 6 points races left including Sunday. Talladega, Martinsville and Phoenix are still ahead of him, so Las Vegas is less about closing that gap and more about not letting it grow.

Blaney is the opposite case. He has led 1,035 laps in 2026, 2nd most in Cup, and his green-flag pass differential of 12.0 per race is the best in the field this season. Las Vegas is the one big oval where none of that has shown up. He has led 89 laps in 20 Las Vegas starts, against 456 at Texas, 294 at Homestead, 182 at Kansas and 171 at Charlotte. He has 6 top-5s and no wins at Las Vegas, and in the last 2 October races he finished 38th and 32nd.

Cindric is the hot hand with the thinnest record. His average finish over the last 5 races is 8.4, against 17.6 over the 25 races before that, and he has scored 137 points since the Chase reset to Blaney's 116, enough to move from the 15th seed to 10th. The 2nd at Kansas was also his only top-5 on a mile-and-a-half this season, and in 9 Las Vegas starts he has a 19.6 average finish and no top-5s.

Our projections do not settle it either. Logano projects to finish 10th, Blaney 11th and Cindric 13th. Logano finishes top-10 in 50.5% of our runs, Blaney in 48.4% and Cindric in 39.8%. As of Thursday morning DraftKings Sportsbook had Blaney at +1000 to win, Logano at +1400 and Cindric at +3000. We do not know which Penske team unloads on Saturday. For anyone thinking about a top-10 market or a fantasy lineup, practice and qualifying will say more about these 3 cars than about anyone else in the field.

It also matters who they are chasing. Toyota has won 15 of the 30 Cup races in 2026 and taken 113 of the 300 top-10 finishes, with fewer cars on the grid than either Ford or Chevrolet.

Larson's track, Hamlin's streak

Larson has the shortest odds to win on Sunday, +350 at DraftKings Sportsbook on Thursday morning. He projects to finish 5th. He wins 16.5% of our 10,000 runs. Denny Hamlin has the next shortest odds at +400 and Christopher Bell follows at +500, and both of them project to finish 6th. Larson also leads the Chase with 2,282 points, 26 ahead of Hamlin and 50 ahead of Bell.

Larson's Las Vegas record is the best of anyone entered. He has an 8.9 average finish in 20 starts, 3 wins and 881 laps led, which is 293 more than any other driver in Sunday's field. Hamlin has the streak. He won at Las Vegas last October and again this March, and since 2005 only Jimmie Johnson has won 3 straight Cup races at the track. Larson, Hamlin and Logano have each won 2 of the last 9 Las Vegas races.

The difference between the 2 favorites is what happens on the days they do not win. Across the 8 Las Vegas races from 2022 through 2025, Larson's average finish was 7.9 and Hamlin's was 12.5. Ross Chastain at 7.6 and William Byron at 10.0 were both better than Hamlin over that stretch. In fantasy, DraftKings prices Larson at $11,500 and Hamlin at $11,000, and we project Larson at 42.1% ownership and Hamlin at 40.9%, so most lineups will have at least one of them.

Bell is the driver running up front the most right now. He has run 860 laps inside the top 5 in the 4 Chase races, 47 more than Larson. At Las Vegas he has 5 top-5s in 13 starts, 279 laps led and no wins, and in October 2024 he led 155 laps and finished 2nd.

Being the favorite has been all or nothing in 2026, and that applies to whoever is on top of the odds this week. The DraftKings Sportsbook favorite has finished inside the top 5 in 18 of 26 starts this season and 13th or worse in the other 8. No favorite has finished 6th through 12th.

Byron's quiet streak

Byron has not won a race in 2026, his average finish is 15.9, and he is 12th in the Chase, 158 points behind Larson. He has also finished inside the top 10 in all 6 mile-and-a-half races this season. His 6.3 average finish in those races trails only Hamlin's 2.7.

Las Vegas has been one of his better tracks. He won in March 2023 after leading 176 laps, he has led 363 laps in 17 starts, and he finished top-10 in 6 of the 8 Las Vegas races from 2022 through 2025. The exception was last October, when he started 5th, led 55 laps and finished 36th. He projects to finish 8th. He finishes top-10 in 61.1% of our runs. DraftKings prices him at $9,200, down from $10,000 at the Daytona 500, and we project him at 20.0% ownership. DraftKings Sportsbook had him +1000 to win as of Thursday morning.

Saturday decides more than usual

Five of the last 9 Las Vegas winners started 1st or 2nd, and 8 of the 9 started inside the top 10. Byron won from 2nd in March 2023. Larson won from 2nd in October 2023 and again in March 2024. Hamlin won from the pole last October and from 2nd this March. The other 4 winners started 5th, 7th, 10th and 13th, and the 13th was Alex Bowman in March 2022, the deepest anyone has come from in that stretch. From 2022 through 2025 the winner started inside the top 10 in 87.5% of Las Vegas races, against 64.7% at every other Cup track.

The rest of the field is less predictable. Over the same 4 seasons a top-10 starter at Las Vegas finished top-10 50.0% of the time, close to the 46.3% at every other track, and Las Vegas ranks 19th of 31 Cup tracks on how closely the full finishing order follows the starting order. Qualifying up front matters most for the win. For a top-10, a driver can still come from the middle of the grid.

Leading laps at Las Vegas

The driver who led the most laps has won 13 of the 30 Las Vegas races since 2005. Recently it has gone both ways. Bell led 155 laps in October 2024 and Logano won after leading 6. Larson led 61 in March 2025 and Josh Berry won after leading 18. Larson led 129 last October and Hamlin won after leading 9. Then Hamlin led 134 this March and won.

For fantasy players, the driver who piles up laps led and fastest laps is called the dominator, and Las Vegas pays him the same as an average track. Across the 20 Las Vegas races since 2015, laps led and fastest laps account for 15.5% of all DraftKings scoring. Across the 406 races at every other Cup track over the same years, the share is 15.6%. The dominator is worth no more at Las Vegas than he is anywhere else.

Bowman's Las Vegas record

Bowman projects to finish 16th, and his season explains why: a 20.1 average finish in 26 starts in 2026, 7 top-10s and no laps led. His Las Vegas record reads differently. He has finished top-10 in each of his last 3 Las Vegas starts, tied with Larson for the longest active streak, and he had 5 top-10s in 7 starts from 2022 through 2025 with a 10.9 average finish. He finishes top-10 in 28% of our runs, DraftKings prices him at $7,300, and we project him at 15.6% ownership. His average start in 2026 is 19.9, so a decent finish would also come with positions gained.

Two records to know

Carson Hocevar has qualified 12.2 on average in 2026 and finished 16.3. At Las Vegas the gap is wider: 6 starts, a 26.3 average finish and no top-10s. He projects to finish 13th at $8,700. We project him at 21.1% ownership. Shane van Gisbergen has a 33.0 average finish in 4 Las Vegas starts, the worst of anyone entered, and he projects to finish 26th. Las Vegas also typically has fewer incidents than most tracks: 6.0 cautions per race, against 7.2 at every other Cup race since 2023.

Saturday: the Focused Health 302

Justin Allgaier projects to finish 4th. He wins 20.9% of our runs. DraftKings prices him at $13,000 and we project him at 42.0% ownership. Carson Kvapil wins 12.8% of our runs. He projects to finish 6th at $10,500, and Jesse Love projects to finish 7th at $11,000. Corey Day projects to finish 8th at $8,700.

The Focused Health 302 goes green Saturday, Oct 3 at 7:30 pm ET on The CW. O'Reilly Series practice runs Saturday, Oct 3 at 2:00 pm ET, with qualifying right after it.

Sunday

The South Point 400 goes green Sunday, Oct 4 at 5:30 pm ET on USA Network. Cup practice runs Saturday, Oct 3 at 4:30 pm ET, with qualifying right after it.

The South Point 400 is the 5th of the 10 Chase races. Every number in this piece was run before a car has turned a lap at Las Vegas this weekend. Once Saturday's practice and qualifying are in the books, the race gets re-simmed 10,000 times on the projections page, and the tables there will not match the ones above.