PENNZOIL 400

Sunday, 3:30 p.m. (FOX)

He’s been great and we could not be more pleased with his performance.”

He’s also noticed a patience in Larson, particularly at Homestead last week when Larson could have been too aggressive with his preferred style of riding up against the wall.

“Everybody also had the thought of Kyle, fast but he crashes. Or fast but he hits the wall, fast but does a lot of those things,” Knaus said. “Homestead would have been a great opportunity to compromise the car and he didn’t do it. He ran top-five all day long, didn’t think he had more than that and didn’t want to push it.

“That’s a high level of maturity that I did not know he had.”

NEW WINNERS

Las Vegas should be the track that returns some normalcy to victory lane after three surprise winners through the first three races.

Michael McDowell and Christopher Bell scored the first wins of their careers to open the season and Byron earned his second-ever Cup victory. But the 1.5-mile traditional intermediate Las Vegas track represents the type of track the Cup cars frequent most and the top teams really pull away from the pack.

Six of the drivers in Sunday’s field are previous Las Vegas winners, including two-time defending race winner Joey Logano.

Denny Hamlin, the current Cup points leader, has never won in 18 starts at Las Vegas.

ODDS AND ENDS

Harvick is the 5-1 favorite to win Las Vegas, where he won in 2016 and 2018. Martin Truex Jr. is 13-2, while Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin are both 8-1. Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano are 9-1 and Logano is the defending race winner. … Chase Briscoe is leading the rookie of the year standings by nine points over Anthony Alfredo. Briscoe last season was the first Xfinity Series driver in history to sweep the Las Vegas races. … Raiders quarterback David Carr is the grand marshal. … Spectators returned to the speedway for the first time since last February’s race. The speedway was permitted to host approximately 12,500 fans and tickets sold out for all three days of racing. Infield camping was not permitted. “This is the first time I can ever remember being disappointed to announce a sellout,” said Chris Powell, track president.