HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Larson proved himself the weekend’s most dominant driver at Homestead-Miami Speedway, winning two of the three national series races, capping off the extraordinary three-day performance with his 30th NASCAR Cup Series victory in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400.
Larson seized upon a miscue by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Alex Bowman, who put his pole-winning No. 48 Chevrolet in the outside retaining wall with six laps remaining Sunday. That contact allowed Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to pass him for the race lead and jet off to a 1.205-second win — the 32-year-old Californian’s first Cup Series trophy of the year.
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“I knew me coming towards those guys, they were going to start moving around and making mistakes, and I felt like if I could just keep pressure on Alex, he may make a mistake, and he caught the wall there, and I got around him easier than I expected to,” Larson, the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion, said. “Still had to work hard, though. My balance in clean air was really loose, just like those guys were. Hats off to the whole team.”
Bowman, who started first in the 37-car field, led 43 laps and was obviously disappointed even in a second-place outcome, coming so close to his first victory of the year.
“Guess I choked that one away, for sure,” Bowman said, revealing he actually hit the wall harder the lap before he was passed. “Just kind of burned myself up. Saw the 5 [Larson] coming, so I moved around a little bit.
“Man, I hate that for this Ally 48 group. They deserve better than that. Just a couple mistakes there. Felt like we were OK all day there.”
23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace finished third, leading a season-high 56 laps in the No. 23 Toyota. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe finished fourth in the No. 19 Toyota — the afternoon delivering season-best finishes for Larson, Bowman, Wallace and Briscoe.
JGR’s Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-five finishing order and won Stage 2 — his 15 laps out front are the most on the year for him.
The day’s most dominant driver was Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney, whose No. 12 Ford led a race-best 124 laps, only to suffer an engine failure with 60 laps remaining. A huge blast of smoke burst out of the car as it slowed abruptly onto the frontstretch from a top-five position.
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He ended up 36th of the 37 cars, the 2023 season champion suffering his third straight DNF this year.
“I didn’t have any warning,” said Blaney, a runner-up in the previous two Homestead races. “When I got back to wide open down the front, that was all she wrote. Just stinks. Really fast Ford Mustang, led a lot of laps, lost a little bit of track position with stuff on pit road, but got back to third, and it was a great race between me, Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was going to get back into it. It was going to be quite a battle in the last 60 laps or so.
“Just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for giving me just a hot rod today, an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our head up. Just one of those things where it isn’t really going our way right now. But the good news is we’re bringing fast cars, and that’s all you can ask for.”
RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher rallied to a sixth-place finish, followed by Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, RFK’s Ryan Preece and Spire Motorsports’ Justin Haley.
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With the win, Larson moved into second place in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, 36 points behind Hendrick teammate and Daytona 500 winner William Byron. Bowman is now third in the championship, 39 points back. The fourth member of the team, Chase Elliott, finished 18th and is sixth in the standings — the promising start to the season a strong confidence-builder for all the drivers.
“Had to keep plugging away, proud of myself, proud of the team, just a lot of gritty hard work there today between damage on pit road, qualifying bad, bad restarts all that stuff,” said Larson. “Just super pumped. One of the coolest wins I think of my Cup career just because of all the heartbreak here, the heartbreak yesterday. Just kept my head down and kept digging.”
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The heartbreak Larson referred to was his 2-for-3 showing in his tripleheader sweep attempt. He won Friday’s Craftsman Truck Series race and suffered a gut-wrenching near-miss in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race — an afternoon where he led the most laps only to get tapped from behind in an overtime restart and finish fourth.
Larson will attempt the three-race sweep at Bristol Motor Speedway in April, hoping to equal the work of two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, who is the only driver in history to win all three national series races on the same weekend — and he did it twice, accomplishing the feat at Bristol in 2010 and 2017.
Christopher Bell, who leads the series with three victories this season, placed 29th after a Lap 70 spin and slight contact in his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Josh Berry — last week’s first-time winner at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — ended up 17th, continuing after contact with Larson and Joey Logano led to a pit-road spin during the Stage 1 break.
MORE: Cup Series standings | Cup Series schedule
The NASCAR Cup Series resumes next weekend at Martinsville Speedway with Sunday’s Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Byron is the defending race winner.
NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Cup Series garage at Homestead-Miami concluded without issue, confirming Larson as the race winner.
Contributing: Staff reports