The Spring 2021 Las Vegas Race Review features much more lead changes and passing than usual, despite one of the larger margins of victory for the track.
Lead and Caution-O-GramsTM
Let’s look first, as we always do, as the lead- and caution-o-grams.
The six cautions was right around the three- and five-year averages for Spring 2021 Las Vegas races. LVMS isn’t a track known for a lot of accidents and we only had one this year.
The Lead-O-Gram is a mess, which is how we like it to be. It shows 12 distinct leaders, with 11 of those quality leaders (meaning they didn’t lead due to cycling during yellow-flag pit stops.) There were 27 lead changes, which is the highest number since 2007.
There were 26 lead changes last spring race, but the number of green-flag racing lead changes was much larger this year.
Leaders and Lap Leaders
Here are your Lap Leaders for the 2021 Spring Las Vegas Race.
Kyle Larson dominated the 267-lap race, followed by Denny Hamlin. A number of drivers like McDowell and Suárez led laps by staying out during cautions.
Passing
This race was significant for a lot of passing in the field, as well as for the lead. There were an average of 17.1 passes per green-flag lap for this race, which the highest value since NASCAR started reporting Loop Data stats in 2005.
Fastest Laps
Larson also had the most fastest lap in the race, with Byron second. (Byron was second last week, too.)
This graph suffers from being mostly raw data. I haven’t gotten a routine to filter out drivers who got fast laps during cautions, or to flag drivers who led during green-flag pit cycles, when the fastest cars might be on pit road.
That’s your Spring 2021 Las Vegas Race Review!
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