After the last off-weekend of the season, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series returns to championship competition this week at Las Vegas with Saturday’s Focused Health 302 (7:30 p.m. ET on CW, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Haas Factory Team driver Sheldon Creed, who has two wins in three Chase races to date, is turning in a career year, hoisting his first ever series trophy at Atlanta then answering with clutch back-to-back wins at St. Louis and Bristol last month. He now holds the championship lead by 11 points over six-race winner JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier.
JR Motorsports’ Carson Kvapil is 37 points off Creed’s pace and reigning series champion, Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love is 41 points back.
Interestingly, none of the 2026 No. 1 seeds entering the Chase – Hamlin in NASCAR Cup Series, Allgaier in the ORAP Series nor Layne Riggs in the Craftsman Truck Series – are leading the championship standings now.
Creed’s third-place finish there in March was best among the 12 Chase drivers.
Nine different drivers have won the last nine Vegas races. Aric Almirola, who does not compete fulltime, is the defending race winner and current NASCAR Cup Series championship leader Larson won this Spring. Three of the last six Las Vegas races have been won by a non-championship contenders. And no driver has ever won the Las Vegas Chase race and gone on to win the title that same year.
Allgaier (Spring, 2025) and RCR’s Austin Hill (Spring, 2023) are the only fulltime drivers with a Las Vegas trophy. Allgaier started from pole position in this race last year and finished third. He is 116 laps away from surpassing Kyle Busch’s series’ high mark for most laps led at Las Vegas.
“Las Vegas has been a really strong track for us in the past,” said Allgaier, who is riding a record 10 consecutive top-10 finishes at the track and has a series best 21 top-10s all-time there.
“Something about this place has always suited my driving style and I can’t think of a better place to go to then here to try to reclaim that point lead. We were solid here in the spring and I know that [crew chief] Andrew [Overstreet] and everyone on this team have worked tirelessly through the off weekend to ensure we are going to be even stronger when we hit the track on Saturday.
“If we can just go out and execute like we know we can, I feel like we will have a great chance to have a great night on Saturday.”
Of note: The last four Las Vegas races have been won by drivers aged 30 or over. … Only four of 38 races have gone into overtime and none since 2019. …The driver who leads the most laps has won 63 percent of the races. … Only twice has there been a last lap pass for the win – the last coming by NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin, who got around Keselowski for the 2011 victory.
Practice gets underway at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday followed by Kennametal Pole Qualifying at 3:05 p.m. ET.
— NASCAR Wire Service —