Pennzoil 400 Picks, Predictions and Race Preview

As the drivers adapt to new cars, the NASCAR season is getting off to an unpredictable start. However, some of the best in the game are favored for this weekend's stop in Vegas, including Kyle Larson, defending champ of both this race and the Cup Series championship.

Get the NASCAR betting low-down with our picks and predictions for the Pennzoil 400, which gets underway at 3:30 p.m. ET, Sunday, March 6.     

You can also check out the full Pennzoil 400 odds breakdown.

Pennzoil 400 favorites

Kyle Larson (+500)

He won last spring and had a fast car last fall. Larson is coming off of a win in Fontana too, to go along with a victory in five of the last seven races dating back to last season.

Joey Logano (+750)

Logano has 10 Top-10 finishes in his last 12 Vegas starts and was fifth last week.

Ryan Blaney (+1,000)

He has eight Top-7 finishes in his last 10 starts in Vegas.

Pennzoil 400 long-shot picks

Kevin Harvick (+1,800)

A solid sleeper here. Harvick had three Top-4 finishes in a four-race span before being eighth, 10th, 20th and ninth in his last four. Harvick was seventh in Fontana after starting in the back.

Brad Keselowski (+2,500)

12 Top 7s in his last 13, including four Top 3s in his last seven overall at Vegas. Worth a look.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (+5,000)

This new car has evened the playing field and Stenhouse Jr. was third and 11th in his last two Vegas spring starts. Imagine what he could do now?

Pennzoil 400 fades

Chase Elliott (+750)

Prior to a runner-up in last year’s playoff race, Elliott had just two career Top 5s on this track, with his last three finishes being 26th, 22nd and 13th, respectively. He has five finishes of 22nd or worse there, too.

Denny Hamlin (+1,200)

Hamlin may have won the last time out in Vegas and has three straight Top 4s there, but those are his only Top 5s in his last 10 tries, too.

Pennzoil 400 matchup pick

Kyle Larson (-125) vs. Chase Elliott (-105)

An absolute no-brainer here and a fitting matchup since both had a run-in at the end of last week’s race in Fontana. However, Larson has gotten the best of his teammate lately, with him having won five of the last seven Cup races (dating back to last Fall) while Elliott hasn’t won on an oval in well over a year (November 2020).

Elliott has two career Top 5s on this track while Larson just won this race a year ago.

PICK: Larson (-125)

Pennzoil 400 preview

This is the first true test of the new car, right? The LA Coliseum is a football stadium, Daytona is Daytona, and Fontana, we’ve not been to in two years. With the dwindling nature of 1.5-mile tracks and NASCAR trying to find a way to improve the racing, this weekend will be an early indicator if this new car helps or hurts the show.

Last weekend in Fontana was treacherous. The drivers all agreed that this car is much harder to drive than the past one and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is, there were a lot of spin outs in all three aspects of the weekend. We saw it in practice, qualifying and the race.

Part of that is due to the tire. The other due to the nature of this car.

So, what will we see this weekend?

The thing is, this race has been run under mostly green flag conditions, including 89% of last year’s race. 2020 saw nine cautions, but three were for stage breaks or a competition caution while the others were for single car incidents. The 2019 race saw two caution flags fly — both for stage breaks. In the race in 2018, we saw only four cautions fly for just 29 laps. The spring race has been tame in nature lately.

What we have also seen in Vegas is that Ford has been the most dominant team on the 1.5-mile track, with 13 wins in 28 tries. The thing is, they were shut out a year ago.

Also, over the past five NASCAR Cup Series seasons, the spring race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been a precursor to how the rest of the campaign will go.

In 2017, Martin Truex Jr. led 150 of the 267 laps in the Cup race en route to a dominating victory. He’d go on to win seven more times that season including the championship as well.

In 2018, Kevin Harvick won his first of eight trips to Victory Lane in the March race in Vegas as he led 214 laps that day. No one won as many races in 2018 as Harvick.

Joey Logano won the next two spring races and would march to fifth in the final standings at the end of the year in 2019 and the Championship 4 in 2020.

Kyle Larson won last year and won the title too later. The entire Top 6 of the finishing order last spring took up six of the eight spots into the Round of 8 last postseason.

Does that change this year since there’s been so much parity from the new Next Gen car? We had eight different teams represented in the Top 10 of the Daytona 500 and nine more last week in Fontana. 

Furthermore, out of 20 combined Top-10 spots available the last two weeks, only one driver has scored a Top 10 in both races – Aric Almirola (5th, 6th). 19 drivers have a Top 10 already this season and 10 drivers have Top 5s, with no one having a Top 5 in each race combined. 

Tyler Reddick swept both stages a week ago in Fontana but came home 24th after cutting a tire while leading.

Pennzoil 400 key stat

Here’s a strange but true stat: the second stage winner at Vegas has won seven times and was fifth in another in nine tries. 2020 was the only outlier when Chase Elliott swept both stages in the spring race but cut a tire in the end. Kurt Busch snuck up and stole a win in the fall race of that year.

So far this season, both races saw a driver sweep both stages. Martin Truex Jr. won Stage 1 and Stage 2 in the Daytona 500 but finished 13th after suffering damage in a late-race crash in the tri-oval.

Tyler Reddick swept both stages a week ago in Fontana but came home 24th after cutting a tire while leading.

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