Richard Petty gives his take on the “fastest thing” at the Las Vegas race

Legacy Motor Club ambassador Richard Petty has disclosed what he believes was the 'fastest thing' at the recently concluded Las Vegas Motor Speedway race, and it's not a Cup Series car.

The third race on the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series calendar took place at the 1.5-mile track on March 3. Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson grabbed his first win of the season at the Pennzoil 400.

The HMS driver collected a second win for his team after the first one was brought in by William Byron at the season-opener Daytona 500. Joey Logano was the polesitter in Atlanta and set the fastest speed of 184.357 mph in qualifying, followed by Larson in second at 184.225mph.

However, according to the 7x NASCAR Cup Series champion Richard Petty, the speediest thing during the main race on the tri-oval asphalt wasn't a Cup car, but the wind.

During his race recap on X (formerly Twitter), Petty and former NASCAR driver Dale Inman talked about how the wind played its cards and pushed Erik Jones' #43 Toyota to finish inside the top 15, even though his car was apparently not good enough to do so on its own.

"The fastest thing out there was the wind," said Richard Petty.

Inman added:

"Yeah, exactly. They said it even changed 6 miles an hour down the backstretch during the race."

"It was strictly a handling racetrack, had nothing to do with horsepower or anything," replied Petty.

"They [LMC] probably took a 28th or 30th place car and finished 14th [Erik Jones] with it," said Dale.

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Richard Petty weighs in on the 3-wide photo finish at the Atlanta Motor Speedway

The Ambetter Health 400 at the AMS witnessed the Trackhouse Racing driver Daniel Suarez seal the victory by a thin margin of 0.003 seconds. He was followed by Ryan Blaney in P2 and Kyle Busch in P3, who fell shy by just 0.007 seconds.

On top of that, during lap two of the second race on the Cup Series calendar, a massive wreck trapped 16 cars in it, becoming the biggest NASCAR crash in the history of Atlanta.

Following the historic 260-lap Cup race at the 1.54-mile oval, Richard Petty drew parallels between what it is to race on the Daytona International Speedway and the AMS. He said during the race recap on X:

"This was racin'. These guys were racin' each other. One guy could pull out and pass somebody, where at Daytona when someone pulls out, they gotta have somebody with them. Here they didn't need any help."

The NASCAR Hall of Famer added:

"From the time they throwed the flag, till the race was over, them guys were racin' like it was the last dadgum lap. Can you believe they run a race that long, 260 laps, and 3 cars were 🤏 that much of each other."