Practice #1 : Bristol Motor Speedway

• Thursday, April 10th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

Hamlin Eyes Three-Peat, Larson Targets Historic Sweep in Bristol Tripleheader

How unusual would it be for two different Joe Gibbs Racing drivers to fashion three-race winning streaks in the first nine events of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season?

It could happen.

Denny Hamlin, fresh from consecutive victories at Martinsville Speedway and Darlington Raceway, goes for a third straight win in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

With a victory, Hamlin would match the feat achieved by teammate Christopher Bell in the second, third and fourth races of the season, at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Circuit of The Americas and Phoenix Raceway.

Last season, the spring race at the 0.533-mile short track returned to the concrete surface after three years on dirt. Hamlin won for the third time in the last eight races at Bristol and fourth time overall, second only to Kyle Busch (eight wins) among full-time active drivers.

The rate of tire fall-off in last year’s event took all the competitors by surprise and played into the hands of Hamlin, an acknowledged master of tire management.

However, the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota believes Sunday’s race is more likely to mirror last fall’s Bristol Night Race, won by Kyle Larson.

“I think that was just kind of an anomaly,” Hamlin said of last year’s Food City 500. “We thought it was temperature, we thought it was all kinds of different things, but truthfully, there’s something that was different.

“Don’t know really what it was, but I would expect that we would have the normal Bristol (this year), where your tires don’t wear that much, if it’s the same tire. Temperatures look to be up, so I would say that we would have kind of the normal Bristol that we’ve had most of the time.”

Hamlin will have a formidable challenger in Larson, who is going for a triple of his own. Larson is competing in Friday’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event and Sunday’s Cup race, hoping to sweep the weekend, a feat achieved by Busch twice at Bristol, in 2010 and 2017.

No other driver has ever won all three national series races at the same track on the same weekend, though Larson came close three weeks ago at Homestead-Miami Speedway, winning the Truck and Cup races but losing the Xfinity race on a late restart.

No doubt Busch will be paying close attention to Larson’s effort, as he was at Homestead.

“He just tried it at Homestead an came awfully close,” Busch said. “Barring a restart late in the going, he had it. That’s what happens with the triples, man. There are so many variables that can come down to whether you get it or not.

“If somebody can beat Larson off of pit road on the final run of the Cup race and he can’t pass them, that’s what happens in that one. But I’m sure he’ll go and do well, and so be it.”

The bottom lane of the track will be sprayed with PJ1 Trackbite for all three races this weekend, a departure from the resin used last spring.

“I think that’s been the most consistent thing that we’ve done,” said Chris Buescher, who won the Night Race in 2022. “The majority of time it’s been three or four feet of PJ1 on the bottom.”

Interestingly, Buescher is the only Bristol winner in the last eight races to win from a starting position outside the top five. The Roush Fenway Keselowski driver won from 20th on the grid.

“We’ve been really good at Bristol,” Buescher said. “We’ve had good pace. Our team, (crew chief) Scott Graves and our whole group have made great strategy calls to find some track position and be able to make some big gains in that sense.

“We’ve had race cars that have run the bottom really well when (other cars) have gotten strung out on the top, and we’ve been able to pass a lot of cars that way.”

Buescher is the exception that proves the rule, but if qualifying position remains a decisive factor, that argues for Hamlin, too. He leads all active drivers with four pole positions at Thunder Valley.

Busch has two poles to his credit. No other full-time active driver has more than one.

• Bristol Motor Speedway
• Food City 500
• Busch Pole Award Pole Winner: Alex Bowman
• Age: 31
• Team : No 48 - Ally Chevrolet
• Owner: Rick Hendrick
• Crew Chief: Blake Harris
• Alex Bowman won the Pole Award for the Food City 500 with a lap of 14912 seconds, 128675 mph
• This is his seventh pole in 334 NASCAR Cup Series races
• This is his second pole and fourth top-10 start in 2025
• This is his second pole in 16 races at Bristol Motor Speedway
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr (second) posted his first top-10 start of 2025 and his third in 22 races at Bristol Motor Speedway
• Kyle Larson (third) posted his 10th top-10 start at Bristol Motor Speedway It is his fourth in nine races this season
• Riley Herbst (25th) was the fastest qualifying rookie

• Sunday, April 13th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

Kyle Larson Sweeps Bristol Weekend with Emotional Cup Series Victory Honoring Late Friend

For the second straight day at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kyle Larson dominated a NASCAR race and dedicated the victory to friend and PR representative Jon Edwards, who passed away suddenly during the week leading up to the race weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.

On Sunday, Larson won the Food City 500 NASCAR Cup Series race in overwhelming fashion, leading 411 of 500 laps and sweeping both stages.

The victory was Larson’s second of the season, his second straight at the 0.533-mile high-banked short track and the 31st of his career, and it came one day after the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet ran away with the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Thunder Valley.

“This one’s definitely for Jon,” said Larson, who finished second in Friday night’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race, one spot short of sweeping the weekend. “He’s just a great guy. Successful weekend here. Wish he was going to be here with us to celebrate, but I know he’s celebrating with us in spirit.

“Just a flawless race once again here at Bristol for the 5 team. Really, really good car. That was a lot of fun.”

Larson, who brushed the outside wall at the apex of Turns 1 and 2 with five laps left—without consequence—finished 2.250 seconds in front of Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin, who fell one spot short of a third straight Cup victory. Hamlin’s teammate, Ty Gibbs, was 6.679 seconds back in third in a race that ran without caution for the final 235 laps.

“However many laps of green we ran there was a lot of fun,” Larson said. “I was pretty comfortable with things, and then Denny came on really strong there before the pit cycle and kind of kept the pressure on from there.”

After the final pit stops, Hamlin could close within a second of Larson in traffic but never threatened to take the lead.

“You have to give that team their due—just a dominant 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. I’m glad we were able to give him a little bit of a run with our Progressive Toyota.

“But this weekend, we are all thinking about Jon Edwards’ family, (racing journalist) Al Pearce, (team owner) Shige Hattori (all of whom passed away within the last eight days). We’ve lost a lot of great people in our sport over the last week, so our thoughts are with them.”

“Wish we could have got one more spot, but I just wanted to keep him honest there at the end. That was all I was trying to do, but he was a little too much to handle.”

Hamlin and Larson have finished 1-2 on seven occasions. Sunday’s race was the first of the seven times Larson has come out on top.

Contrary to strong indications from Saturday’s practice, Bristol’s concrete surface rubbered in, and tire wear was not the factor that most teams and drivers anticipated. Ryan Blaney, for instance, ran 175 laps on one set of tires before pitting on Lap 440.

Chase Briscoe came home fourth, as JGR claimed the three positions behind Larson. Blaney ran long during the final green-flag run, led 48 laps after Larson pitted on Lap 390 for tires and fuel and worked his way back to fifth at the end.

Pole winner Alex Bowman led the first 39 laps before Larson grabbed the top spot for the first time. Larson went to win the first stage over Hamlin and the second over Bowman, who later fell out of the race when his engine expired.

The Stage 2 victory was the 66th of Larson’s career, tying him with Martin Truex Jr for the most since stage racing was introduced in 2017.

William Byron charged forward to a sixth-place finish after starting 26th. Ross Chastain ran seventh, followed by Christopher Bell and AJ Allmendinger, the last driver on the lead lap. Austin Dillon was 10th, the first driver one lap down.

• Drivers Entered: 39
• Laps Scheduled: 500
• Margin of Victory: 02.250 Seconds
• Time of Race: 2 Hours 38 Minutes 43 Seconds
• Average Speed: 128.675
• Cautions: 3 for 40 laps
• Lead Changes: 4
• Green Flag Passes: 2,197 (4.8 passes per green flag lap)

• Bristol Motor Speedway
• Food City 500
• Race Winner: Kyle Larson
• Age: 32
• Team : No 5 - HendrickCarscom Chevrolet
• Owner: Rick Hendrick
• Crew Chief: Cliff Daniels
• Kyle Larson won the Food City 500, his 31st victory in 375 Cup Series races
• This is his second victory and sixth top-10 finish in 2025
• This is his third victory and 13th top-10 finish in 18 races at Bristol Motor Speedway
• Denny Hamlin (second) posted his 20th top-10 finish in 36 races at Bristol Motor Speedway It is his sixth top-10 finish in 2025
• Ty Gibbs (third) posted his third top-10 finish in five races at Bristol Motor Speedway
• Riley Herbst (28th) was the highest finishing rookie
• William Byron leads the point standings by 30 points over Denny Hamlin