It was a big weekend in Las Vegas for NASCAR’s stars as fan favorites, and underdogs took home the hardware in the desert. However, not everyone can walk home a winner; here are the biggest losers from NASCAR’s Spring weekend in Las Vegas.
Chase Briscoe’s season has not gone according to plan. After a pole in the Daytona 500, the first-year Joe Gibbs racing talent saw a massive but overturned penalty and has yet to finish in the top ten since Daytona. This was compounded Sunday afternoon when the No. 19 team had a difficult pit stop, as the car spit off its left rear wheel exiting the pits.
Briscoe would finish 17th and walk out of Vegas with just 20 points. This team cannot get it together since the penalty at Daytona. Though that penalty amounted to nothing, the on-track performance has been lackluster, only overshadowed by teammate Ty Gibbs’s terrible start to the season in the No. 54.
Harrison Burton had one of the most emotional wins of the 2024 season. Yet, the young driver found himself out of his Wood Brothers Racing ride at season’s end, with the team opting for former Stewart-Haas Racing talent Josh Berry to take over duties.
He finds himself on the losers list not because of his performance on Saturday but because of how he failed to perform on Sundays with WBR from 2022 to 2024. While Burton returned to Xfinity Series action for 2025, most expected Berry to perform similarly, if not slightly better, in the No. 21 this year. However, the short-track ace has gone above and beyond for WBR five races into the season.
Berry has already outdone Burton’s best season in the car in just five races, raising further questions about the second-generation driver’s skill level in NASCAR. Burton’s still young and is off to a great start to this season with AM Racing, but having your name mentioned due to poor performance months after being pulled from the car is brutal.
Joey Logano’s No. 22 team had a lot to prove entering the 2025 season. After having one of the worst statistical Championship seasons, fans pressured the veteran to back it up on the track.
For the most part, No. 22 has done so in 2025, and it is currently sitting 8th in points. Of course, there is a caveat to this, as No. 22 has yet to score a top-ten finish, earning most of its points from stage results. This is the issue for Logano this season; though he runs well in races, he cannot piece together a strong race finish.
Logano currently boasts an average start of 8.2 but an average finish of 19.8. Although he has had a car capable of winning in four of the first five races, a crash at Daytona, a Penalty at Phoenix, and now a poor pit stop in Vegas have cost him major ground during races. The No. 22 needs to put it all together if they want to contend again in 2025, but we were all saying that in 2024.
Clint Bowyer’s move from full-time driver to analyst for FOX Sports has not been the smoothest. After his career ended in 2020, the former Cup Series winner and all-around personality seemed destined for success on TV, yet some fans have already called for his removal.
There is a laundry list of reasons cited by fans, most amounting to his on-screen presence or lack thereof or what some may deem as unprofessionalism, such as pointing out things unrelated to the race or making odd remarks throughout broadcasts. That being said, when asking who these fans would want to replace Bowyer, there are little to no direct answers.
This weekend, NASCAR on FOX may have found their next broadcaster, Kyle Busch. Busch joined NASCAR on the CW for the Xfinity Series race and impressed fans across the NASCAR community. Of course, fans quickly suggested that Busch should replace Bowyer someday; however, Rowdy would have to retire for that to happen.
All things aside, this might have been one of Blaney’s worst race weekends to date. Two accidents served as bookends to a weekend that scored the driver just seven points and dropped him from fourth to seventh in the standings.
As part of Practice Group 1, Blaney exited turns one and two, the No. 12. A downed right rear tire sent Blaney into the outside wall. After this crash, the team would fix their primary car and start the race 36th. On Sunday, No. 12 was hard-charging early on and looked to have race-winning speed. Sadly, Blaney’s weekend ended after a hard crash on lap 196, in which the driver took the blame for what happened on track.
It’s safe to say that Ryan Blaney consistently takes some of the hardest hits in NASCAR. This one was not different, with fans relieved to see the driver released from the infield care center. That aside, Blaney is going to have to pick up the pieces of his great start to the season and find momentum as we enter the long haul.
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