Truex leaves Las Vegas with clean sweep

Martin Truex Jr. hit the Las Vegas jackpot as Brad Keselowski rolled snake eyes.

Truex dominated the Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by winning all three stages with an overall 150 of 267 laps led. But it was Keselowski who charged to the front with 23 laps to go and looked to be headed to his second consecutive win. A restart with nine laps to go saw Keselowski briefly gap Truex before something in the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford soured, allowing Truex to drive by with two laps to go.

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The victory was the first for Truex at Las Vegas and the eighth of his career.

"It was a gift," Truex said in Victory Lane. "We've been on the other side of that plenty of times, it's the first one we've had come our way ... Just really proud. First victory for the 2018 [Toyota] Camry out here on the West Coast, this is a big one for us."

Truex also became the first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver to win all three stages in a race.

"They're still hard, they're still tough," Truex said of stage racing. "You're still driving your butt off every single lap. I know I was. The race didn't play into our hands, we had to go really long on that last set of tires and Brad [Keselowski] was really good on the long run all day and he was always catching us at the end, and we had to stretch it. I was driving my little butt off, I just couldn't keep him behind me.

"We got a little bit lucky there, but that's why you never give up and you fight to the end."

Kyle Larson finished second with Chase Elliott, Joey Logano and Keselowski rounding out the top five. The rest of the top 10 were Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Jamie McMurray, Matt Kenseth and Clint Bowyer.

The defending winner at Las Vegas, Keselowski led 89 laps after starting from the pole.

"It was something pretty major because I lost brakes and the car wouldn't turn," Keselowski said of what went wrong. "Probably caused that wreck at the end, I just couldn't get out of the way, just broke. But that's part of how it goes. Wish I was 265 laps but it's not. That's why you gotta watch until the end, fans at home. You win some this way, you lose some this way."

Logano's fourth-place finish came at the expense of Kyle Busch. As the two looked to get around the slowing Keselowski, Logano charged into Turn 3 on the last lap and slid up into the side of Busch, sending him spinning.

Kevin Harvick, who entered the day the point leader, saw an early end to his day when he blew a right front tire going into Turn 1 on Lap 70 and slammed the wall. He finished 38th.

"It started vibrating about four or five laps there before it blew out, and I was just trying to ride it to the end of the stage there," Harvick said. "Obviously, it didn't make it. The worst part was the medical response, it took them forever to get to the car. I thought we made that better, but obviously, we haven't.

"All in all, our Mobil 1 Annual Protection Ford was running good. We were just too loose right there. It's not like we were even tight, so it either just cut the tire, or came apart or melted the bead."

There were six cautions during the event and 14 lead changes among six drivers.