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Ricky Stenhouse Jr. held off Mark Martin on a restart with 39 laps to go and went on to easily win the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday afternoon.

The margin of victory for the 21-year-old defending series champion over second-place Martin was over 5 seconds.

“That was a serious beat-down that Stenhouse put on me,” Martin said.

Stenhouse led a race-best 55 of the 200 laps. The victory was his first of the season and third of his career.

“I definitely think we had the car to beat,” Stenhouse said. “I feel like we could have started sixth and still won that race at the end. I found a line that I liked to run and the car was coming around to it. (Crew chief) Mike Kelley made some awesome pit calls there and I think we just had the car to beat.

We were running Mark down the run before. We were catching Brad (Keselowski) and he had his troubles, so I feel like we could have won if we started second or third row, but it was definitely a lot easier starting on the front.”

Elliott Sadler finished third.

Finishing fourth was Stenhouse’s Roush Fenway Racing teammate, Trevor Bayne.

Fifth was Brendan Gaughan, driving for Richard Childress Racing.

Rounding out the top 10 were Cole Whitt, Austin Dillon, Justin Allgaier, Sam Hornish Jr. and Kasey Kahne.

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