Denny Hamlin had another strong run on Sunday, finishing fourth and earning 15 stage points.  That allowed him to expand his points lead up to 38 points.  That margin is over Brad Keselowski, who won stage one and finished second to gain eight spots.  Kyle Larson is up five places to third after his victory, while Chase Elliott is up one place to fourth despite spinning out and finishing 13th.

Christopher Bell and Joey Logano are tied for fifth.  Bell moved up two places after finishing seventh, while Logano dropped positions after finishing ninth.  Kevin Harvick is down five places to seventh after he struggled in the second half of the race and finished 20th.  Martin Truex Jr. is up one place to eighth after finishing fourth.

Michael McDowell had a more average day on Sunday, finishing a lap down in 17th.  That dropped him five places to ninth.  Kurt Busch is down four places to 10th after nearly getting collected by Elliott and finishing 19th.  William Byron is up two places to 11th after leading early and finishing eighth.  Austin Dillon is down one place to 12th after starting and finishing in 12th.

Ryan Preece is down one place to 13th after finishing 15th.  Kyle Busch's third-place finish moved him four places to 14th.  Ryan Blaney ran up front for much of the race and moved up to 15th from 24th after finishing fifth.  Chris Buescher ended up 14th Sunday, which put him up into the top 16.

Buescher is two points ahead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who finished 11th Sunday.  Alex Bowman is down to 18th after cutting a tire late in the race and nearly clouting Anthony Alfredo while trying to get to pit road.  He would finish two laps down in 27th.  Cole Custer struggled all day and dropped five places to 19th after finishing 25th.  Bubba Wallace is down to 20th after a mechanical failure cost him five laps at the end of stage one.  He would finish 29th.

Point Standings (1-16): 1) Denny Hamlin 187, 2) Brad Keselowski -38, 3) Kyle Larson -40, 4) Chase Elliott -48, t-5) Christopher Bell -49, t-5) Joey Logano -49, 7) Kevin Harvick -51, 8) Martin Truex Jr. -56, 9) Michael McDowell -61, 10) Kurt Busch -65, 11) William Byron -71, 12) Austin Dillon -72, 13) Ryan Preece -75, 14) Kyle Busch -89, 15) Ryan Blaney -96, 16) Chris Buescher -97.

Playoff Points: t-1) Kyle Larson 6, t-1) William Byron -1, t-3) Michael McDowell -1, t-3) Christopher Bell -1, 5) Denny Hamlin -3, t-6) Kyle Larson -5, t-6) Brad Keselowski -5, t-6) Chris Buescher -5.

Stage Points: 1) Denny Hamlin 62, 2) Chase Elliott -21, 3) Kyle Larson -22, 4) Joey Logano -24, 5) Brad Keselowski -25, 6) William Byron -30, 7) Christopher Bell -32, 8) Martin Truex Jr. -33, 9) Austin Dillon -34, 10) Kurt Busch -35, 11) Kevin Harvick -39, 12) Ryan Blaney -40, 13) Bubba Wallace -41, 14) Chris Buescher -45, 15) Ryan Preece -47, 16) Kyle Busch -50.

Outside of the Top 16, but still in the playoffs: 20) Michael McDowell -56.

Old Point Standings (1-16): 1) Denny Hamlin 145, 2) Michael McDowell -8, t-3) Brad Keselowski -15, t-3) Kevin Harvick -15, 5) Kyle Larson -19, 6) Christopher Bell -20, t-7) Joey Logano -25, t-7) Martin Truex Jr. -25, 9) Chase Elliott -26, 10) Ryan Preece -32, 11) Kurt Busch -33, t-12) Austin Dillon -41, t-12) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -41, t-14) William Byron -43, t-14) Kyle Busch -44, 16) Cole Custer -52.

Outside of the top 16, but still in Playoffs: 17) Chris Buescher -55, 18) Ryan Blaney -59.

Race Winners: Michael McDowell (Daytona-1), Christopher Bell (Daytona-2), William Byron (Homestead)

 
Note: Race wins in Italics do not count towards playoff eligibility.

Austin Cindric had a very good car Saturday, winning stage one and leading 43 laps.  However, he cut a tire early in stage two, then got saved by Ty Dillon and Riley Herbst colliding.  He had to fight back from a lap down to finish fourth.  Despite that, he lost some of his points lead.

Cindric's lead is down to 21 points over new second-place man Daniel Hemric, who gained one place after finishing second.  Brandon Jones is up two positions to third after leading laps and finishing third.  Jeb Burton remains in fourth, but he had to charge just to get back to 10th after getting caught speeding on pit road under green.

Justin Haley is up one place to fifth after finishing eighth.  AJ Allmendinger's first win of 2021 boosted him up four spots to sixth.  Myatt Snider had a troublesome day.  He ran into the back of another car while coming into the pits under yellow, which then created an overheating problem.  He finished nine laps down in 32nd and dropped all the way down to seventh.  Harrison Burton is down one place to eighth after finishing ninth.

Jeremy Clements is down to ninth after just not having the pace Saturday.  He ended up finishing a lap down in 17th.  Brandon Brown dropped a spot to 10th despite scoring a couple of stage points and finishing 11th.  Michael Annett is up six places to 11th after finishing sixth and scoring 10 stage points.  Finally, Noah Gragson put a whole race together and finished fifth.  That moved him up all the way to a tie for 12th from 27th

Gragson is currently the last driver in the playoffs via a tiebreaker over JD Motorsports' Landon Cassill.  Cassill had a mediocre day Saturday, finishing 21st.  Justin Allgaier and Joe Graf Jr. are tied for 14th.  Allgaier finished 14th and scored 12 stage points to move up from 26th, while Graf finished 18th.  Josh Berry finished seventh and moved up to 16th.

Point Standings (1-16): 1) Austin Cindric 191, 2) Daniel Hemric -21, 3) Brandon Jones -51, 4) Jeb Burton -58, 5) Justin Haley -63, 6) AJ Allmendinger -65, 7) Myatt Snider -68, 8) Harrison Burton -71, 9) Jeremy Clements -84, 10) Brandon Brown -88, 11) Michael Annett -101, t-12) Noah Gragson -117, t-12) Landon Cassill -117, t-14) Justin Allgaier -119, t-14) Joe Graf Jr. -119, 16) Josh Berry -120.

Note No. 1: Drivers in Bold have locked into the playoffs.

Note No. 2: Drivers in italics are ineligible for the playoffs.

Note No. 3: If he were eligible for points, Brett Moffitt would be ninth in points.

Playoff Points: 1) Austin Cindric 8, t-2) AJ Allmendinger 6, t-2) Ty Gibbs -2, 4) Myatt Snider -3, t-5) Brandon Jones -6, t-5) Daniel Hemric -6.

Note: If he were eligible for points, Brett Moffitt would have one playoff point and be tied for fifth in playoff points.

Stage Points: 1) Austin Cindric 51, 2) Daniel Hemric -12, 2) Brandon Jones -14, 4) Justin Haley -19, 5) AJ Allmendinger -22, 6) Justin Allgaier -23, t-7) Harrison Burton -25, t-7) Riley Herbst -25, t-9) Myatt Snider -27, t-9) Noah Gragson -27, 11) Ty Dillon -33, 12) Jeremy Clements -34, 13) Brandon Brown -37, 14) Michael Annett -39, 15) Ryan Sieg -40, 16) Ty Gibbs -41.

Note: If he were eligible for points, Brett Moffitt would be 13th in stage points.

Old Point Standings (1-16): 1) Austin Cindric 162, 2) Daniel Hemric -12, 3) Jeb Burton -20, 4) Brandon Jones -42, t-5) Myatt Snider -47, t-5) AJ Allmendinger -47, t-5) Justin Haley -47, 8) Harrison Burton -51, 9) Jeremy Clements -55, 10) Brandon Brown -56, 11) Michael Annett -68, 12) Landon Cassill -73, 13) Joe Graf Jr. -74, 14) Josh Williams -78, 15) Tommy Joe Martins -79, 16) Josh Berry -83.

Note: If he were eligible for points, Brett Moffitt would be eighth in old points.

Race Winners: Austin Cindric (Daytona-1), Ty Gibbs (Daytona-2), Myatt Snider (Homestead)

Note: Wins that are ineligible for playoff ineligibility are in italics.

John Hunter Nemechek came to Las Vegas ready to play Friday night.  He led the most laps (94), won stage one and won the race, claiming 59 of a possible 60 points.  That performance allowed him to vault over Ben Rhodes and take the points lead.  Rhodes is down to second after finishing 10th.  Sheldon Creed was involved in two crashes Friday night and ended up finishing 18th.  Despite that, he remains in third.  Matt Crafton is up one place to fourth after finishing fifth.

Chandler Smith is down one place to fifth after crashing and having to drag a wounded truck to 19th.  Stewart Friesen is up 10 places to sixth after running up front all night and finishing fourth.  Grant Enfinger finished seventh driving for CR7 Motorsports, one of that team's best-ever finishes.  It boosted him up seven places from 14th to seventh, but he is ineligible for the playoffs due to missing the BrakeBest Select 159.  Todd Gilliland and Johnny Sauter are tied for eighth.  Gilliland was 13th, while Sauter was 15th.

Carson Hocevar and Austin Wayne Self have the final two places in the playoffs at the moment.  Hocevar had a tough night with an unscheduled stop dropping him to a 24th-place finish.  Self finished 14th.  Hocevar and Self are three points ahead of Austin Hill, who finished third and gained 13 places in the standings.

Christian Eckes is up eight positions to 13th after finishing ninth.  GMS Racing teammates Zane Smith and Raphael Lessard are tied for 14th.  Zane finished a decent sixth, while Lessard crashed on lap 97 in turn 1 and struggled home to finish 30.  Brett Moffitt is 16th.

Point Standings (1-16): 1) John Hunter Nemechek 150, 2) Ben Rhodes -14, 3) Sheldon Creed -35, 4) Matt Crafton -40, 5) Chandler Smith -60, 6) Stewart Friesen -70, 7) Grant Enfinger -79, t-8) Todd Gilliland -81, t-8) Johnny Sauter -81, t-10) Carson Hocevar -82, t-10) Austin Wayne Self -82, 12) Austin Hill -85, 13) Christian Eckes -88, t-14) Zane Smith -89, t-14) Raphael Lessard -89, 16) Brett Moffitt -93. 

Playoff Points: 1) Ben Rhodes 10, t-2) John Hunter Nemechek -2, t-2) Raphael Lessard -8.

Note: If he were eligible for points, Kyle Busch would be fourth in playoff points.

Stage Points: 1) John Hunter Nemechek 46, 2) Sheldon Creed -16, t-3) Ben Rhodes -29, t-3) Raphael Lessard -29, 5) Matt Crafton -21, 6) Chandler Smith -27, 7) Stewart Friesen -30, 8) Grant Enfinger -31, 9) Johnny Sauter -33, 10) Austin Hill -34, 11) David Gilliland -36, 12) Zane Smith -38, t-13) Austin Wayne Self -29, t-13) Christian Eckes -39, t-13) Brett Moffitt -39, t-16) Todd Gilliland -40, t-16) Ryan Truex -40.

Old Point Standings (1-16): t-1) Ben Rhodes 95, t-1) John Hunter Nemechek 95, 3) Sheldon Creed -18, 4) Matt Crafton -22, 5) Chandler Smith -34, 6) Carson Hocevar -39, 7) Stewart Friesen -42, 8) Todd Gilliland -44, t-9) Grant Enfinger -46, t-9) Austin Wayne Self -46, 11) Christian Eckes -48, 12) Zane Smith -50, t-13) Austin Hill -53, t-13) Codie Rohrbaugh -53, t-15) Johnny Sauter -55, t-15) Brett Moffitt -55.

Race Winner: Ben Rhodes (Daytona-1, Daytona-2), John Hunter Nemechek (Las Vegas)

"It feels good. I guess I didn't know if I'd ever have an opportunity to win a NASCAR race again. To get this awesome opportunity with Hendrick Motorsports and Mr. H taking a massive chance on me, then going out there and being strong all year, it's been great.

"I knew we were close to getting a win. Our pit crew [did] a really good job all season long. Cliff and everybody has been bringing really fast race cars to the track. For the most part I've been doing my job, too, on the racetrack.

"I knew if we could continue to do that, we would get a win. Today we put it all together, had a dominating race car to go along with it. Made my job behind the wheel a lot easier.

"Cool to get a win this early in the year, now focus ahead and try to win a lot more, rack up Playoff points, put ourselves in a good spot once the Playoffs start." - Kyle Larson, race winner

"It's tough for me to speak to what it means to the sport. But I think it's a good thing. I think everybody loves a good redemption story. He's fought really hard for his opportunity to come back and making the most of it. I'm happy for him. I think I told him that, just happy for him.

"I wanted to win. I told him I wanted to win the damn race. But if I couldn't, I'm glad he did. We've all been kind of pulling for him.

"In order to be better than him, he just had a little more speed than we had today. I could wrangle the top and make something happen, wrangle the bottom a little bit [and] make something happen on restarts. He could run as fast as we could down the straightaways and a little bit faster in some corners." - Brad Keselowski, finished second

"We fought hard obviously. We were a little behind the eight ball at the start of the green flag and just were super, super tight all day long. Ben (Beshore, crew chief) and the guys made awesome adjustments to and I was trying to give the best feedback I can to give them good information that they can base that off of and make the good adjustments. We improved each time. I don’t know where we missed it so far from the simulator, but that’s two weeks in a row where we’re not apples to apples. Just can’t say enough about Ethel M Chocolates, thank you guys. It’s a pleasure to have them on board here for the first time ever in anything. I remember being there as a kid, a little bit anyways, I was five so it’s a little shady. Certainly, my grandmother is smiling from above so it was really special to have that on our Camry today and say thanks to Interstate Batteries, Rowdy Energy. Ready to keep working on it and keep improving. We were just a little off on pace, overall pace, overall lap time from the fast guys."- Kyle Busch, finished third

"We’re close. We just have to fine tune it. We’re gathering up information right now to figure out how we can make our FedEx Camry better in the fall. This is a good start.

"We got it in the short rounds but not enough long run speed. I thought it was a great start for the FedEx Camry team, gathering data trying to figure out what we can do to be better when we come back here when it really counts. Overall, good start. We will see, gather all the data and I will figure out this week what we have to do." - Denny Hamlin, finished fourth

"I thought it was a pretty solid day all day. We had to start pretty far in the back from our bad finish last week, and was able to make it up to ninth, I think, before the comp caution and got third in the first stage and then like fifth in the second and ended up fifth. I thought we could have run second or third. The 5 was really the fastest one all day long. It didn’t matter where he was he just drove through the field, but, overall, a really good effort by our group. We really needed that after having three pretty bad races to start off the year. It’s nice to kind of finally get a good run and just a no problem day, just having a solid car and working on it throughout the day. I’m really proud of Todd and the whole 12 bunch and nice to get a good finish. Now we can get rolling here." - Ryan Blaney, finished fifth

"Overall, pretty solid day all in all for the Bass Pro Shops Camry. Ran top-five or 10 pretty much all day long. Just never could quite get the balance perfect over the short and the long run. There were a few times where we were probably a third or fourth-place car at best and then towards the end, feeling pretty good. We were running fourth there after the last pit stop and then lost the balance again on the last run and dropped to sixth. Not a perfect day by any means, but decent speed and good execution and good adjustments all day for the most part. Just didn’t quite have enough to be better than we were." - Martin Truex Jr., finished sixth

"We just weren’t as fast as we wanted to be today. There’s a little bit of confusion at the moment to figure out exactly where it is and what we need to do better. There are two different theories and hopefully we can figure out what those are, but, overall, we tried some strategy stuff to get up there in a stage, led a couple laps, but fell off on the older tires, and then tried some more strategy stuff with tires to try to pass two cars and it just seemed like we were a ninth-place car. That’s where we ran most of the day. That’s where we were on restarts. That’s where we were on the long runs, it’s just where we were. We’ve got a little bit of work to do to make up that difference, but it’s a top-10 finish. Hopefully, it keeps us up towards the front in points. We didn’t get many stage points. I’m not sure where we’re at yet, but we’ll head off to Phoenix." - Joey Logano, finished ninth

"It was a really good day for us in the Richard Petty Motorsports Medallion Bank No. 43 Chevy. It was a good day to build. It was way better than last week. We’re really headed in the right direction. We tried a lot of different things this week and made a lot of different changes and it’s just nice to see them pay off and get a Top 10 out of it. That was definitely our goal for today, I felt like. So, hopefully we can keep building on that and continue to get better and better each week."- Erik Jones, finished 10th

"The No. 3 BetMGM Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE was definitely better at the end of the race today than it was to start off. We were extremely loose for a majority of the race, but it started to come alive late in Stage 3. We were tight at the end, which is not surprising because we had a ton of wedge in our car. I tried to get the No. 47 at the end, but he was pretty good and I just had to keep backing up my entry. We didn’t have the greatest of cars, but we hung in there and turned it into a decent day. Good job by Justin Alexander and all of the crew on their hard work to turn things around in the race. We have some work to do, but we will get it." - Austin Dillon, finished 12th

"Big bummer there. I really struggled in dirty air all day, but we were pretty fast. Once things got strung out and we could get going and get some clean air on the race car, I had an issue when we pitted and some stayed out on the restart; got back through the field, got back to ninth and then cut a left rear with like 15 (laps) to go. We definitely should have at least had a solid Top-10 day for Ally and Hendrick Motorsports. But a big congrats to the No. 5 (Kyle Larson, race winner) team. That was really cool to see Kyle get a win early. Hopefully we can join him in that next week and have a good one in Phoenix. I’m looking forward to getting to a short track." - Denny Hamlin, finished 27th