A week after the sudden and heart-breaking passing of celebrated two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, Richard Childress Racing driver Kyle Busch, the grieving sport leaves its Charlotte, N.C. home base and heads west to the Nashville Superspeedway for Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 (7 p.m. ET on Prime Video, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Heavy hearts linger onward after losing Busch, 41, who passed away last Thursday after being hospitalized with sepsis. The sport’s all-time winningest driver across the three national series was certainly a star on the Nashville concrete 1.33-miler with a pair of wins in both the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts and the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series.
23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick arrives in Nashville this week holding a firm grip atop the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings – 122 points over his team co-owner, Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin. Reddick has a series-best five wins and 10 top-10 finishes in the No. 45 Toyota through the opening 13 races His average finish is an incredible 5.54 and he is one of only five drivers in NASCAR history to finish on the lead lap in all 13 opening races.
Three of the five drivers atop the standings – Reddick, Hamlin and JGR’s Ty Gibbs – drive Toyotas, a make that has never won in Nashville’s five-race history, however.
Chevrolet drivers (Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Ross Chastain) won the first three races and Team Penske Ford drivers Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney are the last two Nashville race winners.
Larson boasts the best average finish (5.2) at Nashville and is the only driver with top-10 finishes in all five races. He’d especially love to hoist another trophy in the Music City this weekend considering the two-time and reigning series champion is currently enduring a 37-race winless streak.
A win would also go a long way for former Nashville winner Logano. The three-time NASCAR Cup Series champ has had an uncharacteristically slow season start and is ranked 18th in the standings – with only two top-10s – and among five of last year’s Playoff drivers not ranked among the top-16 in the standings. He’s finished 25th or worse in five of the last six races coming to Nashville – four of those results, 30th place or worse.
However, Logano earned an eighth-place run at Charlotte Sunday night, satisfied with at least an uptick in the finish, “That’s just where we are at the moment, but we just finally finished one, so thank goodness we finished one … At least we got a finish. That’s better than where we’ve been, so we’ll take it.”
Logano’s 8.6 average finish at Nashville is second best all-time to Larson. A Ford win this weekend would mark the manufacturer’s 750th all-time in NASCAR’s top series.
Toyota also has reason to be optimistic this week, despite its winless streak on Nashville’s concrete oval. Not only have Toyota drivers won seven of the opening 13 races this season, the make has been excellent at Nashville. … just not made it to Victory Lane.
The four-car JGR Toyota team, for example, has led twice as many laps at Nashville as any other team. Last year, Ford’s Blaney led a race high 139 of the 200 laps en route to victory, but Hamlin’s 70 laps out front was second best and he finished third. In 2024, JGR’s Christopher Bell swept both stage wins at Nashville and led a race high 131 laps only to be eliminated in a late race crash.
In 2023, JGR teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Hamlin combined to lead 131 laps en route to second and third place finishes. Hamlin led a race high 114 laps in 2022 but finished sixth.
Hamlin and is the all-time laps leader (344 laps) at Nashville and the JGR team has led twice as many laps as any other team – 727 laps compared to Hendrick Motorsports’ 335 laps led in second place.
Of note, two of the four JGR drivers – Gibbs and Chase Briscoe – have never earned a top-10 finish at the track.
Certainly Chevrolet, which has combined for five wins on the year, is energized coming to Nashville. Chevrolet driver Daniel Suarez won Sunday night’s rain-shortened Charlotte race giving Spire Motorsports its second win of the season – doubling the organization’s season win total and tripling its overall win tally.
Practice for the Cracker Barrel 400 is Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET followed by Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 5:40 p.m. – both available on Prime, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Briscoe won pole position last year in the No. 19 JGR Toyota.
Veterans and Rising Stars Collide in Nashville O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Race
Championship points leader Justin Allgaier returns to Nashville as the defending winner of Saturday night’s Sports Illustrated Resorts 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 2024 series champ has been so strong this season, his points lead (145 points) over second place, reigning series champ Jesse Love is greater than the margin between Love and eighth place Carson Kvapil. And the veteran Allgaier, a two-time Nashville winner (2025 and 2022), is the only former winner in Saturday’s race.
On the other side of the experience metric, this will mark Hendrick Motorsports’ rookie Corey Day’s Nashville debut. The talented 20-year-old Californian earned his career first wins at Talladega, Ala. and Dover, Del. in just the last month.
Richard Childress Racing teammates Love and Austin Hill finished second and third last week at Charlotte, marking the first time they’ve both been in the top-five in a race since February at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas road course.
Their teammate this weekend at RCR is popular YouTube personality and ARCA Menards Series regular, Cleetus McFarland, who will make his second career series start and first race ever on the Nashville oval, driving the No. 33 RCR Chevrolet.
Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champ Larson will be competing Saturday night, driving the JR Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet. He’s already won two of his four previous O’Reilly Auto Parts Series starts – at Las Vegas and Texas – this season and has earned top-10 finishes in his last 10 starts in the series.
An interesting note about Nashville. … the Stage 2 winner has gone on to win the race four of the last five years.
Practice is at 2 p.m. on Saturday, followed immediately by Kennametal Pole Qualifying at 3:05 p.m. ET. (CW App). JGR’s William Sawalich is the defending pole-winner. Busch is the last driver to win from pole position (2021).
Just Eight Races Remain as Truck Series Heads to Nashville
Kyle Busch was scheduled to compete this weekend at Nashville in the Spire Motorsports Chevrolet truck. Defending race winner, Rajah Caruth will instead steer the No. 7 Chevy in Friday night’s Allegiance 200 (8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in honor of his racing hero.
Caruth is one of five NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series regulars racing – a list that also includes Love, Sawalich, Brandon Jones and Parker Retzlaff.
They can anticipate strong competition from Nashville’s 2024 truck race winner, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing’s Christian Eckes, who pulled off one of the great feats in the sport – leading every single lap (150) en route to that victory. Those 150 laps out front are the most laps led by anyone since the series returned to the track in 2021.
Former series champ, ThorSport Racing’s Ben Rhodes has the best average finish (9.8) at Nashville among the full-timers since 2021 with Eckes second on that list (10.0).
Only eight races remain to set the 10-driver Playoff field and championship leader, Tricon Garage’s Kaden Honeycutt leads Layne Riggs by 38 points atop the standings with Front Row Motorsports’ Chandler Smith only a point behind Riggs. Positions nine (Stewart Friesen) and 12th (Daniel Hemric) are separated by a slight 14 points.
Practice is at 4 p.m. ET Friday, followed by Kennametal Pole Qualifying at 5:05 p.m. ET (FS1). Corey Heim started on pole position and finished runner-up in last year’s race.
NASCAR Cup Series
Next Race: Cracker Barrel 400
The Place: Nashville Superspeedway
Track Length: 1.33 Mile Concrete Paved Oval
The Date: Sunday, May 30
The Time: 7 p.m. ET
The Purse: $11,233,037
TV: Prime Video, 6 p.m. ET
Radio: PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR (Channel 90)
Distance: 399 miles (300 Laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 90),
Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 185), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 300)
NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series
Next Race: Sports Illustrated Resorts 250
The Place: Nashville Superspeedway
Track Length: 1.33 Mile Concrete Paved Oval
The Date: Saturday, May 30
The Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
The Purse: $1,653,590
TV: CW, 7 p.m. ET
Radio: PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR (Channel 90)
Distance: 250.04 miles (188 Laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 45),
Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 90), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 188)
NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series
Next Race: Allegiance 200
The Place: Nashville Superspeedway
Track Length: 1.33 Mile Concrete Paved Oval
The Date: Friday, May 29
The Time: 8 p.m. ET
The Purse: $789,700
TV: FS1, 8 p.m. ET
Radio: NRN, SiriusXM NASCAR (Channel 90)
Distance: 199.5 miles (150 Laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 45),
Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 95), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 150)
