The 2024 Las Vegas Spring Race has thrown a few curveballs of its own at teams hoping to make a comeback, like Sam Mayer for JR Motorsports and Cole Custer for Stewart-Haas Racing. But on the other hand, it seems like Joe Gibbs Racing shows no signs of slowing down in their early dominance. And at the forefront of this prowess is none other than their rising star, Chandler Smith.

Not only has the 21-year-old kicked off the 2024 season with back-to-back top-fives at the super-speedways, but the Las Vegas Spring Race is also shaping up to be one of his best performances to date.

Chandler Smith capitalizes on JGR’s early success at Vegas

While it looked like Cole Custer was the one to beat after qualifying in pole position, the #00 Ford quickly fell victim to the outside lane and found himself down in fifth within the first few laps, as Chandler Smith slotted his #81 Toyota into the lead. Smith’s part-time teammate at JGR, John Hunter Nemechek, followed closely behind in second, and this theme remained so for the majority of the first two stages.

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Chandler Smith sealed out a solid show of dominance in the first stage with a gap of a few seconds over Nemechek as the stage ended, with the JGR drivers exchanging places in the second stage until Smith once again settled into the lead. The two-stage wins at Vegas have nearly doubled Smith’s run of stage wins; he now sits at five.

While the stage win was a vital one for Chandler Smith, as the last time he had done so was during last year’s race at Richmond, fate would stop favoring the 21-year-old as the third stage commenced. John Hunter Nemechek was slowly reeling in his teammate, and the two battled for the majority of the remaining laps.

Despite Smith leading 73 laps, Nemechek would pull ahead and seal victory at the Las Vegas Spring Race with a gap of almost five seconds at the flag. But this begged the question, what made Chandler Smith’s #81 Toyota lose out on the dominant form it had shown in the first half of the race?

Smith reveals what went wrong with the #81 in the third stage

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Although Smith’s wins in the first and second stages were proof of the #81’s raw pace, it fell short of his teammate’s #20 car after the last round of pitstops. Nemechek pulled ahead with a five-second gap, that Smith was just not able to close. But Smith hadn’t been involved in any major tussles, so what had gone wrong at such a vital moment?

After the race, Chandler Smith dissected what led to his loss in pace. The JGR star stated, “I just got laterally super free after we came in at the end of stage two but at the same time, when I fired back off, there was a really loud pop, like something broke, something in the rear. And after that, I went to crap for the rest of the race so I don’t know, I get out of the car and I feel it’s a lot cooler out here and this track is super sensitive to track temperature change as well, so I think it’s a combination.”

C. Smith revealed that the #81 had entered a weird steering lock, meaning that the wheel was at the limit of grip and turning it far enough could lead to disaster. Still, Smith felt the main reason behind his drop-off was the team’s adjustments to the car during the final green-flag pit stops.

He concluded, “I think we over-adjusted, I’m not gonna sit here and say we broke something for sure because we don’t know. I about wrecked getting into (turn) three probably five times and then I was good and out of nowhere I just had a huge moment out of four. Just had no lateral grip.”

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With that said, Joe Gibbs Racing still brought home solid results with Nemechek’s win and a third-place finish for Chandler Smith. As the teams now head to Phoenix, will another team give Coach Gibbs’ side a run for their money?