1 week Ago By By JEFF BIRCHFIELD [email protected]
BRISTOL — A different day, another Kyle Larson romp at Bristol Motor Speedway. The driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet led 411 laps in Sunday’s Food City 500.
It came on the heels of Larson dominating Saturday’s SciAps 300 for the Xfinity Series and leading 462 of the 500 laps in last September’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race. Larson was ahead by an entire straightaway at one point of Sunday’s race. He took the lead for the final time on lap 440 after Ryan Blaney, who gambled on strategy, had to make a pit stop.
“I love this place because it is just so high paced and with traffic; just dicing it up and picking the right lines at the right time,” Larson said. “It’s like a 500-lap sprint car race. It just suits me and my style with quick decision making.
Just had another good race.” Pre-race concerns of excessive tire wear proved to be unwarranted. The race was slowed only three cautions, two for stage breaks and only one for an incident between Shane van Gisbergen and Cody Ware.
It was Larson’s second Cup Series win of the season, his third Cup Series win at Bristol and the 31st of his career. Larson took the lead for the first time on lap 40 and led the rest of Stage 1. He dominated Stage 2, leading all 125 laps.
Denny Hamlin was able to close the margin at times when Larson worked his way through slower traffic. However, his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Toyota was no match for the fast car of Larson, who seemed to pull away at will.
“I felt like I made some good moves in traffic,” Larson said. “The third stage going green-to-checkered was nice. When you have a good car and can move around, it makes it fun.
” Hamlin, who was going for a third straight Cup Series victory, finished 2.25 seconds behind. “You have to give Kyle and his team their due,” Hamlin said.
“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, but I just wanted to keep him honest there at the end. That was all I was trying to do, but he was too much to handle.
” Ty Gibbs finished a distant third and another Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota teammate, Chase Briscoe, was fourth. It was the first top-five finish for Gibbs since Kansas last September. “It was a really good clean day,” Gibbs said.
“It has been a chaotic start of our year. I was kind of managing the race and figuring out the way we needed to be. We definitely made an improvement.
” Blaney scored his second straight top-five with his fifth-place run. He talked about the gamble to stay on the track. “I thought it was a good move just in case someone blew a tire or something,” Blaney said.
“For a while we had everybody lapped and that was the long shot play to try and win the race. Running long right there was really our only play to win.” William Byron and Ross Chastain finished sixth and seventh, followed by Christopher Bell in a Toyota.
A.J. Allmendinger and Austin Dillon rounded out the top 10.
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