MOORESVILLE, N.C. — This weekend’s NASCAR Cup Collection occasion at Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the primary of seven intermediate-style tracks on the Cup Collection schedule.
Intermediates function the bread-and-butter of the calendar, the place ovals from 1.3 miles to 2 miles comprise 25 % of the races.
The 1.5-mile Las Vegas oval and it similarly-sized sister observe, Kansas Speedway in Kansas Metropolis, host two races apiece, with every of their second races coming within the 10-race playoffs.
Final 12 months, Rick Ware Racing displayed quiet confidence at intermediates. Its collective driver roster of Justin Haley, Corey LaJoie and Cody Ware scored 9 top-25 finishes, a quantity headlined by Haley’s Thirteenth-place run June 30 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.
When LaJoie took over for Haley for the ultimate seven races of 2024, he additionally confirmed power in RWR equipment, ending fifteenth Sept. 29 at Kansas and 14th Oct. 20 at Las Vegas.
Ware was a contributor too, even with a restricted, nine-race schedule. He completed twenty first Aug. 19 at Michigan Worldwide Speedway in Brooklyn after which repeated that consequence two months later at Las Vegas. These efforts, augmented by a career-best fourth-place end Aug. 24 at Daytona (Fla.) ‘l Speedway, earned Ware the second-best common end amongst drivers who ran a restricted Cup Collection schedule.
Ware’s common results of 21.0 was second solely to A.J. Allmendinger, who competed in 16 races and earned a mean end of 20.5.
“Wanting again at 2024, our intermediate-track program was a powerful swimsuit,” mentioned Ware, driver of the No. 51 Evel Knievel/Elements Plus Ford Mustang Darkish Horse for RWR. “Justin, Corey, me – all of us had some good, respectable runs. We labored exhausting to create baseline for this 12 months.”
Las Vegas would be the first true take a look at to see the place that baseline stands in regard to the competitors.
The primary 4 races of the 2025 season have been anomalies. The Cup Collection has raced on back-to-back superspeedways at Daytona and Atlanta, a highway course at Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas, and a flat, mile-long oval in Phoenix. The ovals that make up the vast majority of the NASCAR calendar haven’t been represented. Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 offered by Jiffy Lube adjustments that.
“We began the 12 months with three straight wild-card races, the place seemingly something can occur,” Ware mentioned. “It simply felt like there have been a number of variables out of our management. Final week at Phoenix was most likely the primary race the place I felt like we managed our future a bit of extra, and we got here out of there with a good end. Vegas will give us a gauge of the place our efficiency is relative to the remainder of the sector.
“We’ve been fairly respectable at Las Vegas, and that offers me the arrogance to fireplace off in observe and qualifying to extract probably the most velocity out of the automotive so we will see the place we actually are. As soon as we get this Vegas race beneath us, we’re going to have a greater thought, directionally, of the locations the place we will work to make our vehicles higher.”
Las Vegas is a quick, sweeping race observe. Drivers lap the 1.5-mile oval in underneath 30 seconds with a mean velocity that approaches 185 mph. With its corners banked at 20 levels, two- and three-wide racing is widespread, and its aged asphalt supplies sufficient grip for drivers to go looking completely different strains in an effort to search out extra velocity.
“Vegas is one in every of my favourite tracks to go to on the schedule. It’s one of many few 1.5-mile tracks that we go to that I really feel has remained principally unchanged within the final 10 years,” Ware mentioned.
“It’s bought a number of character. Being out within the desert, it may be a bit of bit dusty, and you’ve got some fairly important bumps, particularly over within the corners. You need to be very cognizant of your nook entry and the road you’re taking, as a result of should you hit these bumps in turns one and two simply the mistaken method, it might finish your day fairly rapidly.
“And with the completely different strains you possibly can run, you could find methods to make the automotive give you the results you want even when your automotive isn’t precisely the place you need it. In case you don’t have deal with in your automotive, there’s a couple of lane-and-a-half you should utilize in turns one and two. But when your automotive is dealing with nicely, you possibly can take these bumps aggressively. That opens up a number of racing alternatives from the underside of the race observe all the way in which to the wall.
“I’m to see if it’s going to be a race of uncooked velocity, or if we’re going to have lengthy green-flag runs the place we’ll see a number of technique come into play.”
