Food City 500: Kyle Larson leads 411 of 500 laps, dominates Bristol

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Kyle Larson put on an absolute clinic at Bristol Motor Speedway, leading 411 of 500 laps en route to his second NASCAR Cup Series win of the 2025 season in the Food City 500 and his second victory of the weekend in Thunder Valley.

Larson took the lead from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman on Lap 40, and led until Lap 369 before coming to pit road. Once he regained the lead on Lap 440, it was smooth sailing for the driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet.

In fact, Larson leading over 400 laps in back-to-back Bristol races made him the first driver to do so since Bobby Allison in 1972, according to NASCAR Insights.

The NASCAR world and Hendrick Motorsports mourned the loss of the beloved Jon Edwards, Director of Racing Communications at Hendrick, who lost his life this past week. Larson dedicated his Xfinity Series race win from Saturday and Cup Series victory at Bristol to Edwards.

“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. We had a damn good weekend, as he would say. 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.”

Larson was very close to becoming the second driver in NASCAR history to win the Truck, Xfinity and Cup Series races on the same weekend. For the second time in 2025, Larson won two of the three races, only this time Larson was the runner-up finisher in the Truck Series race on Friday night.

A few weeks ago at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Larson won the Truck and Cup Series races, but finished fourth in the Xfinity Series race.

Denny Hamlin was looking to become the second driver in 2025 to win three straight races in the Cup Series. Unfortunately for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, his teammate Christopher Bell will remain the only driver to do so as Hamlin finished second at the high-banked Tennessee short track.

“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, Al Pearce, Shige Hattori. 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.”

Results from the 2025 Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

After last year’s Bristol spring race and this year’s practice session on Saturday, many drivers were worried about tire wear becoming a major factor for the teams to deal with on race day. However, there were little to no tire issues in the 2025 Food City 500.

There was only one natural caution in addition to the two stage-break cautions, which helped the 2025 Food City 500 become one of the fastest NASCAR Cup Series short-track races (100.745 mph) in history (1,149 races).

With Kyle Larson sweeping both stages, he is now tied with Martin Truex Jr. for the most stage wins in the Cup Series (66 stage wins).

Ty Gibbs had his best run in the Cup Series since last at Michigan. A third-place finish was just what the 22-year-old driver needed after a long slump.

“It was a good day,” Gibbs said. “I was kind of managing the race and figuring out the way we needed to be. It was fun. I had a blast. We’ve definitely made an improvement. Thank you to Monster Energy, SAIA and Toyota. It was fun.”

Joe Gibbs Racing had all four cars inside the top eight. Denny Hamlin was second, followed by Gibbs (third), Chase Briscoe (fourth) and Christopher Bell (eighth).

According to NASCAR Insights, this was the first time since the end of 1976 and start of 1977 where there were back-to-back races in the Cup Series with five or fewer lead changes.

 

GRID RANKING