Las Vegan eyes strong run at home track: ‘We want to keep building’

Las Vegas native Noah Gragson said he wasn’t sure what direction his NASCAR Cup Series team would go when Stewart-Haas Racing announced in May it was shutting down after the season.

The driver of the No. 10 Ford said he thought the “ship would have sunk by now.” Instead, he’s seen the exact opposite.

“The ship is still afloat,” Gragson said. “We haven’t even gotten close to the iceberg, by any means.”

Gragson is nearing the end of his first full Cup Series season. He will race in the South Point 400 on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the first race in the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. In the spring, Gragson had a then-career best sixth-place run at his home track.

“It’s one of our better tracks here in Vegas, too, so it’s really exciting to get back out to the racetrack,” Gragson said. “It suits my driving style. I’ve run pretty good here in Xfinity and Truck Series, and in the Cup car, we had a really fast car in the spring and want to keep building off it.”

Gragson is 25th in the Cup Series point standings with seven top-10 finishes and did not qualify for the playoffs. The 26-year-old recorded a career-best finish of third at Talladega in April. His team was hit with a 35-point penalty early in the season for an infraction with his car’s roof rail deflections.

“It seemed like things were going good, and we stalled out throughout the summer months, and it’s been up and down from there,” Gragson said. “It’s been a lot of challenges that have presented themselves with the closing of Stewart-Haas and a lot of distractions, but it’s not an excuse. We need to be better.”

Gragson said he would give himself a “C” on the season. But he credited crew chief Drew Blickensderfer for helping guide the team through the inconsistency of the season.

“It’s definitely distracting, but I look at it as another challenge and try to deal with it in a positive way,” Gragson said. “Everybody takes it differently, but as a leader of the race team, it’s my job to keep everybody’s spirits up and focused.”

Gragson will stay in the Ford camp and drive for Front Row Motorsports next season. In 2023, he raced for Legacy Motor Club, but he was suspended by NASCAR in August for “liking” an insensitive meme on social media and didn’t race the rest of the season.

Gragson got into Las Vegas late Tuesday after testing in Pensacola, Florida, for the Snowball Derby, a premier super late model stock car race. He won the event in 2018.

On the track, Gragson said having a fast car around Las Vegas takes managing the bumps through Turns 1 and 2, and being able to kook the car to the bottom white line through Turn 4. In these final few races, Gragson said he’s focused on building a notebook so he knows what he will need when he goes back to tracks next season.

With a decent amount of time on his hands in his hometown, Gragson said he visited his usual dining spots, Le Thai and Tacos El Gordo. He said he will play some golf, but added he’s nothing like the pros who will tee it up at the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin.

“When you swing a golf club, you’re like, ‘Man, that’s my swing, that’s my tempo, I feel like a pro,’” Gragson said. “Then you watch your swing on camera and, damn, that looks horrible.”

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.