For the second time in as many races, Kyle Larson nearly pulled off the trifecta—Truck, Xfinity, and Cup wins in one weekend. Nearly. He missed it by that much. Again. And you know what? He didn’t give a damn.
Because on Sunday, Larson didn’t just win the Cup race at Bristol. He dominated it. He led 411 of 500 laps, as if he’d shown up with a remote control and just fast-forwarded the field into submission. It was his second straight Bristol Spring race win, and this one came with extra weight—dedicated to his longtime PR man, Jon Edwards, who passed suddenly and far too soon just days before.
“Yeah, it’s special,” Larson said. “You know, Jon Edwards meant a lot to the 5 team, and a lot to the NASCAR Industry, too. Just good to get a win for him. Obviously, we don’t want to be winning for him and his spirit, we wish he was here in person with us. But he is no longer here, so it’s just going to be fun to celebrate and I know he is smiling down on us.”
There was a lot of hope and an equal dose of dread heading into the weekend. Hope that the race would be a tire-shredding, chaos-soaked spectacle. Fear that it would be… well, a tire-shredding, chaos-soaked spectacle.
Saturday’s practice sessions didn’t help. Tires were melting faster than chocolate bars on a Florida dashboard. It looked like déjà vu all over again from last year’s tire-debacle-turned-strategy-marathon. So NASCAR tossed the teams an extra set of tires, and crew chiefs likely tossed back a couple whiskeys Saturday night, trying to sleep.
But when the green flag dropped on Sunday, something weird happened. The tires held up. And for the first time in Bristol’s stage-racing era, the entire first stage—125 laps of close-quarters carnage—went green. No wrecks, no debris, no yellows. Just Larson out front, putting half the field a lap down like he was swatting flies.
The theme of the day was clear: track position. Stay out front, and you were king. Fall back, and you might as well be racing a dump truck through a car wash.
The only real incident came at lap 178, when Shane van Gisbergen—already two laps down—got loose and collected Cody Ware in a graceful double-spin that served as the day’s one and only caution outside of the stage breaks. From then on, it was all about clean air and strategy.
Larson snagged the Stage 2 win—his 66th career stage win, tying him with Martin Truex Jr., who now spends his Sundays fishing and wondering why he ever put up with this madness in the first place.
The only bit of tension came late, during green flag pit stops in Stage 3. Larson pitted from the lead on lap 390 and rejoined in seventh. Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace, and Ryan Preece tried to pull a fast one—stay out, gamble on a caution, hope for a miracle. But by lap 425, even Blaney had to admit the gig was up and finally gave up the lead to pit on lap 439. In the end, he said it was worth the gamble.
“I thought it was a good move just in case someone blew a tire or something, but for a while we had everybody lapped and that was the long shot play to try and win the race,” he said. “I was fifth before that cycle started, so it was nice that we got back up there for how long we ran. I didn’t have a ton of laps to make it back up, but, overall, it was a good call by Jonathan (Hassler, his crew chief). It was the chance to catch a break and it didn’t really come.”
Larson retook control like a man snatching the remote back from someone watching the Hallmark Channel. He got a little too close to the wall with ten to go, but even that didn’t matter. He cruised home 2.2 seconds ahead of Denny Hamlin, like a man late for dinner but in no particular rush.
“You have to give that team their due – just a dominate performance,” Hamlin said. “It looked like a pretty flawless day for them. It looked pretty easy. It was all I had to try to keep up there. “
Ty Gibbs and Chase Briscoe followed in third and fourth. Blaney, bless him, rallied back to fifth.
Polesitter Alex Bowman led the opening 39 laps before Larson took over. Then his engine went up in smoke like a backyard leaf fire, sending him behind the wall and out of the race before lap 350.
Larson’s Cup win capped off a near-perfect weekend. He came up one spot short in Friday’s Truck race, then won Saturday’s Xfinity event. Not bad for a guy who spent the weekend reminding the world that when it comes to Bristol, he’s not here to play—he’s here to own.
Behind him, William Byron came home sixth, followed by Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, AJ Allmendinger, and Austin Dillon rounding out the top 10.
Now, the NASCAR Cup Series gets its one—yes, one—weekend off before diving into a stretch of 28 straight weekends of racing. That’s right: from now until November, it’s full-throttle, no-lifting, hold-my-beer madness, starting in two weeks at Talladega. Buckle up.
That extra weekend will give Kyle Larson more time to celebrate a dominating and emotional win.
“We had a damn good weekend, as (Edwards) would say,” Larson said. “A lot of fun, and I can’t say enough about the team. The car they brought again here to Bristol was amazing and just makes it fun for me.”
RACE RESULTS
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.