Must-Have: Kyle Larson
Optimal: Larson, Bell, Briscoe, Berry, Cindric, McDowell, Gragson
GPP: Hamlin, Byron, Reddick, Elliott, Busch, Gibbs, Keselowski, Nemechek, Stenhouse
NASCAR continues its western swing this weekend with a stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, marking the first race of the 2026 season using the intermediate rules package. The 1.5-mile layout will run the same package we saw throughout last season, which gives us a strong foundation of past track performance before we start factoring in practice and qualifying from this weekend. With 267 laps scheduled, Las Vegas typically plays out as a race where one or two drivers control the majority of the laps. That said, there are occasions where a third dominator enters the mix and splits up the laps led.
Our must-have today is Kyle Larson. It’s not often we declare a NASCAR must-have, but Kyle Larson is typically in a world of his own here, and practice this week showed no different. He was elite on the long run and the short run, is by far our top car this week. Let’s lock him in.
Christopher Bell will start on the pole, and is viable as well. The pole-sitter is always in play, but he is not a must play today. Bell was good in practice, but not as good as Larson and a few others. He was good in the short run, which gives him a good chance to lead laps early. We do worry about his overall outlook for the entire race considering his pole start will make him high owned. I think he’s a viable fade, and even leads us to his teammate Ty Gibbs. Gibbs looked like the only driver even close to Larson in practice. He is much cheaper, will be much lower owned, and in our opinion is just as fast as Bell. Gibbs is an elite second dominator in GPPs.
Other dominators we recommend are William Byron, Tyler Reddick, and Denny Hamlin. Hamlin was lowkey better than Bell and starts outside the front row. He’s certainly viable in non-Bell lines. Byron was top 5 in practice and gives a few extra potential points from place differential starting 10th. Lastly, we have Reddick. Reddick was roughly top 6 or 7 cars in practice, but we’ve seen him turn it on already at times this season. They are clicking, so feel free to mix in Reddick as well.
As far as optimal place differential plays, we first have Chase Briscoe. Briscoe should have a nice day, but he didn’t show dominator speed. We still really like him, and he’s a nice pick in lineups where you expect Larson to dominate the entire race. Just make sure you prioritize dominators. A GPP option that works as a direct pivot off of the chalkier Briscoe is Chase Elliott. He will start 15th and didn’t look great in practice at first glance, but he did ranks 5th in 14+ laps ran and 4th in 19+. This car could have some sneaky long run speed.
Kyle Busch and Josh Berry are similarly priced and start deep. We like Berry slightly more, but only because of the #8 teams struggles lately. Berry was decent on intermediates last season and was top 15-20 in practice. We like Berry in this range.
Further on down, Brad Keselowski and Austin Cindric start deep as well. Brad K struggled in practice, but Cindric was borderline top 10 in speed when including long runs. Cindric is one of the top values on the slate. Brad K is fine, but more of last guy or two in, nothing worth forcing.
Moving to the cheapest options, you’re gonna be looking at Noah Gragson, Michael McDowell, AJ Allmendinger, and John Hunter Nemechek. Out of these four, we would rank them Gragson, McDowell, JHN, and lastly AJ. We again expect Gragson to have the best floor and ceiling of this group, but he has constantly under performed at times over the last couple years. We still rank him as our top value. McDowell is fine, but didn’t show much speed. Same for JHN, but he starts a few spots ahead. Lastly, we don’t want much to do with Allmendinger. He was slow and didn’t run many laps. We have seen this story before with him and it ended as a horrible performance.