Race Weekend Central

Noah Gragson Survives Late Las Vegas Carnage For Third-Place Finish

Sometimes having the hometown crowd behind you is just what you need.

Coming off the heels of an 11th-place result at Daytona and ninth last weekend at Atlanta, Noah Gragson rallied from as low as 15th to score a third-place finish in Saturday’s Xfinity Series Boyd Gaming 300 at his home track of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“It was good ending for us,” the Las Vegas native said following his third career top five finish. We never quit, I think that’s the main focus: not quitting, not giving up. We don’t do that at JR Motorsports. I have a great team and made some good moves at the end. Went to the top side, really made the top side run well. Lost too much ground a5 the beginning of the run but keep working.”

Gragson pointed to track position and a little luck when it came to restart positioning as main contributing factors to his turnaround. And “ripping the top” at the end.

“Just track position, lane position on restarts and then how it shook out with the couple cautions at the end,” he said. “We kept working on the car all day making positive adjustments, and we got a good handle on it there when it was time for the money stop.”

Rain forced the cancelation of qualifying earlier in the day at LVMS, and howling wind throughout the 300-miler forced for trying conditions inside the cockpit of his No. 9 Switch Chevrolet Camaro.

“(We were) tighter than I thought I was going to be to fire off the run,” he said. “We kept making adjustments pretty much all race long. After the second stage, start of the third stage, it started raining a little bit there in Turns 1 and 2. Just got loose, entry of the corner but overall we adjusted positive throughout the day. We were there when it counted and ended up third. Just keep on working on it, gives us motivation going into next weekend.”

The Xfinity Series heads to ISM Raceway next weekend (Saturday, March 9) for the fourth event of the 2019 season.

About the author

Davey is in his fifth season with Frontstretch and currently serves as a multimedia editor and reporter. He authors the "NASCAR Mailbox" column, spearheads the site's video content and hosts the Frontstretch Podcast weekly. He's covered the K&N Pro Series and ARCA extensively for NASCAR.com and currently serves as an associate producer for SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and production assistant for NBC Sports Washington. Follow him on Twitter @DaveyCenter.

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