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Cup Series driver Noah Gragson is a Las Vegas native and will enter his home race at the 2024 Pennzoil 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway with high hopes and expectations as the local fan favorite.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver knows the racetrack of his hometown very well. When interviewed by Speedway Digest, Gragson looked back on his early days, when his racing journey started at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway campus. He said:
"It’s special. Outside of turns one and two is the Bullring. It’s a three-eighths-mile short track. That’s where I ran my first-ever racecar, a Bandolero, when I was 13 years old."
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Gragson shared his excitement about racing in front of his home crowd and loved ones, saying:
“I get excited just because I get a ton of support from the hometown crowd and a lot of friends and family come out to the race."
The 25-year-old driver had a promising start to the 2024 season, finishing ninth and as the top Ford at Daytona. But it didn't go well in Atlanta, where he ranked 36th after a multi-car crash.
The Pennzoil 400 is now right at the corner, and Gragson is driven to bounce back at his home track.
"I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get to our true test of where we’re at in speed on the kind of track that we’re going to race on the majority of the year,” Noah Gragson said.
The NASCAR Cup Series will race on Sunday, March 3, at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Noah Gragson's thoughts on his 2024 NASCAR season
Noah Gragson has survived a career setback in the last year resulting from a suspension for his interaction with a racially insensitive social media post, and he is now confronted with the task of redemption.
In an interview with Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass, before the season started, the Las Vegas-born talks about his rebirth as he comes back to the NASCAR spotlight with Stewart-Haas Racing for the 2024 season. Acknowledging the weight of expectations, he said:
"I do feel a little pressure.”
Noah Gragson is stressing the need to perform well as a team in NASCAR. He sees that success or good running has positive impacts on many areas of the team and its functioning.
"We do need to run good. Not for any reason in particular but as a whole everything gets better when you're running good," Noah Gragson said.
