BRISTOL, Tenn. — Josh Berry’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs ended in flames at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night.
The No. 21 Ford started showing flames on the right front on Lap 74 and brought his car to pit road two laps later. Smoke billowed into the cockpit, forcing Berry from the car with help from his crewmen as safety personnel worked to extinguish the fire.
Berry entered the Bass Pro Shops Night Race 45 points below the cutline, likely needing to win to advance to the Round of 12. He will end the Round of 16 with three consecutive last-place finishes.
Teams encountered high tire wear with the addition of a new right-side tire, adding to the nuance of Saturday’s cutoff race. The No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team believes the excess rubber that came off those tires contributed to the mechanical failure Berry experienced Saturday night.
“The best that I can tell is it was the rubber buildup on the header (that caused the fire), and then that just spread to the rocker (panel),” crew chief Miles Stanley told NASCAR.com. “And once the rocker catches, you’re kind of hosed. I didn’t really see how quickly it progressed; it seemed to progress really quickly. And then, like I said, once the rocker was on fire, there really wasn’t a whole lot we could do.”
Berry said the issue began in earnest about seven laps before he brought the car to the team’s attention.
“We started getting some smoke in the cockpit,” Berry said, “and then the longer I went, the darker the smoke got. And obviously by the time we got on pit road, it was completely black smoke. So yeah, obviously something caught on fire.”
The flames never breached the cockpit, Berry explained, but the plumes of smoke became too much to endure.
“A few things happened there,” Stanley said. “Once we got in the box, we tried to get the road crew out to get the fire out on the right side, and then the right-side window got taken out. And when that got taken out, a bunch of oxygen came in, and then all the foam went up (in flames).”
The high tire wear is exactly what Berry believed could have played into his hands. A win in Saturday’s race would have propelled the sophomore driver into the Round of 12 after a dismal start to his first postseason appearance. Instead, he was sidelined before the conclusion of Stage 1.
“Just disappointing, again,” Berry said. “Our car was really good. That was going to fall right into our wheelhouse, I feel like, to have a really good night. We were able to make it pretty long on that first set (of tires) and we were going to be set up in a really good spot, I think.
“This one’s going to be hard to watch because it looks like it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
Even though the tire wear would have played into his favor, Berry admitted that “it definitely caught me off guard.”
“I was fully convinced it was going to be hammer down,” Berry said. “But I could tell probably 15 or 20 laps into the race, we were running like 16.10s (lap times). And you could see some people start coming back to us, and you can tell, right? I mean, the pace yesterday in practice was 15.70s, 15.80s, hammer down the whole time.
“And when we’re in the 16s that quick, I was like, you can tell that’s going on. You can see the marbles start developing, and yeah, man, it’s crazy.”
Saturday night marked three consecutive weeks of last-place finishes for Berry after early-race mishaps. The playoffs began at Darlington Raceway, where after qualifying third, Berry’s car bottomed out through Turn 2 on the opening lap and spun out, sending him into the garage for repairs. Last week at World Wide Technology Raceway, the No. 21 car went spinning at Lap 36 after errant contact by Chase Elliott. How does Berry move forward after three weeks of worst-case scenarios competitively?
“Better than three last-place finishes,” Berry smiled. “Len (Wood, team co-owner and chief operating officer) was saying before the race he never thought they had two in a row and now we’ve got three in a row.”
If there’s solace to be found, it’s that all three incidents were largely out of Berry’s control. The outcomes have been miserable in recent weeks, but Stanley remains optimistic heading into the final seven races of the season, which includes a stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he, Berry and Co. won in March.
“We just keep building fast cars and bring fast cars to the race track, and that’s all we can do,” Stanley said. “We’ll try and win some races here coming up in this stretch.”
NASCAR returns to Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday for one of my favorite races of the year: the Bass Pro Shops Night Race (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
The dominant story line for teams, drivers and even bettors will be whether there will be significant tire wear in tonight’s race.
Goodyear is bringing a softer right-side tire for this event in an attempt to accelerate tire wear and put more emphasis on drivers to “save their stuff” and increase passing.
Unfortunately, from what we learned at Bristol in the spring, it’s tough to predict just how significantly tires will wear until the race itself.
With that said, drivers and teams did not see much falloff during Friday’s practice sessions, so the expectation is that tire wear won’t be much of an issue tonight.
Now that we have data to examine, I’m betting on two outright winners for Bristol, as well as a live +2700 long-shot pick to score a surprising top-1o finish.
NASCAR Odds, 3 Best Bet Picks for Bristol
*Odds as of Saturday morning
NASCAR odds from BetMGM show Kyle Larson as the race favorite at bet365 with +300 odds, followed by Ryan Blaney (+350), Denny Hamlin (+450), Christopher Bell (+100) and William Byron (+1300).
My first bet comes from this group of favorites.
When the Cup Series visits Bristol, my mind immediately goes to Hamlin.
Hamlin, who qualified a very solid sixth for today’s race, has finishes of ninth, first, first, fourth and second at Bristol since NASCAR introduced the Next Gen car.
Pretty good.
Throw in the fact that the No. 11 Toyota was one of the fastest long-run cars in practice and we have a driver capable of dominating tonight’s race at a palatable +550 price tag.
We move immediately to Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Ty Gibbs, for my second Bristol bet for many of the same reasons.
Gibbs qualified very well — fourth — at a circuit where track position is imperative, was lightning quick in practice and has an impressive history in Thunder Valley.
No, Gibbs has not won here — he still is searching for his first Cup Series win — but finishes of fifth, ninth, 15th and third show he can certainly be in the mix if the car is right.
Riley Herbst was just 29th fastest in qualifying, putting him at disadvantage to start tonight’s race.
However, the 23XI Racing driver showed very impressive race pace in practice, ranking fifth in 20-lap average and second in 25-lap average.
The biggest threat to Herbst is going a lap down early while stuck at the back of the field, but if he can leverage his car’s long-run speed to maneuver forward and not get trapped a lap down at the stage breaks, this bet has serious upside at +2700 odds.
NASCAR Pick: Riley Herbst (+2700) for a top-10 Finish — FanDuel
BRISTOL, Tenn. — For the first time in 41 days, Connor Zilisch ran a NASCAR Xfinity Series race and didn’t win.
While Aric Almirola sailed to Victory Lane in Friday night’s Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Zilisch was forced to settle for fifth place in the opening race of the Xfinity Series Playoffs, snapping his four-race winning streak. Zilisch had won seven of the eight races prior to Friday’s event at Bristol.
After leading a race-best 98 laps, Zilisch led a handful of competitors to pit road with just 35 laps remaining after a caution flag waved for Carson Ware’s spin at Lap 263. Eight cars stayed on track to capitalize on track position with older tires, but Zilisch couldn’t overcome the traffic and ultimately worked his way back to fifth by the time the checkered flag waved.
“It’s part of it,” Zilisch said. “We had a winning car today, and we were in the right position. But those late-race calls to pit or not when you’re the leader are just really tough. … Those decisions are tough. And we do our best to make the right calls, but you know, it’s not easy to always make the right calls. We’ll learn from it and move on to Kansas.”
Zilisch may not have celebrated a win this time, but his 52 points earned tied Almirola’s total for the most points accumulated Friday night, in part thanks to a Stage 2 victory and a runner-up effort in Stage 1.
“I feel like we got a lot of points today and built our buffer to the cutline, got a stage win, so overall, good day,” Zilisch said.
The No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet had been on an incredible run, seemingly unstoppable at times over the last eight races. Zilisch’s four-race winning streak was improbable in itself. It began at Watkins Glen International on Aug. 9, when he slipped from his car’s window in a scary Victory Lane fall that resulted in a broken collarbone. Without missing a race, he returned for the Xfinity Series’ next event at Daytona International Speedway on Aug. 22 and started the event before Parker Kligerman subbed in and subsequently won — a victory credited in the scorebook to Zilisch himself.
He followed those two triumphs with respective wins at Portland International Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, two completely unique tracks at which he had never raced.
The 19-year-old seemed poised to do it all over again Friday at Bristol, but fate had something else in mind at the 0.533-mile bullring.
“When you’re upset with fifth place, you’re doing something right,” Zilisch said. “We’ll keep building on it and get better in Kansas. But I know that we are heading in the right direction as a team and things are looking upward. And we’re leading lots of laps and putting ourselves in position.”
Track: Bristol Motor Speedway Location: Bristol, Tenn. Track length: 0.533 miles When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET Where to tune in: USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App Race purse: $10,447,135 Race distance: 500 laps | 266.5 miles Stages: 125 | 250 | 500 Defending winner:Kyle Larson, September 2024 Starting lineup: AJ Allmendinger earns first pole since 2015
“Last Great Colosseum” presents some Round of 16 drivers’ last great opportunity
BRISTOL, Tenn. — The Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol is an event unlike any other.
It is the “Last Great Colosseum” where gladiators stand tall after taming the beast. But after Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race, at least four drivers will face the colosseum’s wrath as the NASCAR Cup Series’ Round of 16 comes to an end, eliminating four drivers from championship contention.
Heading into Saturday’s race, the four drivers in the greatest danger are Austin Dillon (11 points below the cutline), Shane van Gisbergen (minus-15), Alex Bowman (minus-35) and Josh Berry (minus-45). But clinging onto title hopes just ahead of them are Austin Cindric (plus-11), Ross Chastain (plus-19) and Joey Logano (plus-21).
It will take 500 laps to determine who moves on to the Round of 12 and who doesn’t. Chastain feels the intensity of this weekend — the nerves of the playoffs, the weight of chasing victory. But he is also letting himself enjoy the moment of competing in one of NASCAR’s most iconic events.
“For me, I equate it to driving through the tunnel at Daytona (or) driving down to Darlington,” Chastain said Friday. “But here, it’s pulling up and seeing the stadium and then also walking through the Turn 3 tunnel. Just never gets old. So cool looking up at the banks and then the steepness of the grandstands. Went up and watched truck practice (Thursday) in the grandstands and then was up in the Food City suite for the race. It’s just amazing just being here. Even if there’s no racing, it’s cool, and you don’t get that everywhere.”
A critical factor in how the race evolves will be a new right-side tire brought to the Tennessee track by Goodyear, a deviation after the last four Bristol races. The hope is that a softer rubber compound leads to more tire wear, ideally putting control of the tire degradation in the hands of the racers. A fast start with disregard for the tire could make drivers a vulnerable passing target later in the run. If a driver waits too long to push, though, he may not be able to track down those ahead of them.
No tire issues arose through Friday’s practice and qualifying sessions, but there remain unknowns about how the tire and track will evolve Saturday night.
“If anyone’s telling you they know what’s gonna happen, they’re making it up,” said Joey Logano.
Christopher Bell expressed his reservations heading into the event but admitted: “It should be very exciting for you guys (the media) and the fans, because we don’t know what to expect at all.”
“It is really unknown, and this is the most unknown race,” he added. “I feel like ‘unprepared’ might be the right word — like just not being able to prepare for something because we don’t know how it’s going to go. We’ve seen the hard tire have issues twice now, between practice last time (in March) and the race a couple years ago. So yeah, for a playoff race, this is probably the biggest question mark I felt in my career.”
In need of a strong defensive showing, Cindric qualified a personal-Bristol-best of third. On the opposite side of that elimination line, Dillon will roll off 23rd; SVG will start 28th; Bowman rolls off 15th and Berry takes the green flag in 10th.
At Bristol, nothing is guaranteed. AJ Allmendinger will lead the field to green, but a slew of hungry playoff drivers in his rearview mirror, like Ryan Blaney, Cindric and Kyle Larson, will be hot on his heels. It’s the allure of the “Last Great Colosseum.” It’s Bristol, baby.
What do crew chiefs have in focus to win Saturday’s race?
N0 team has dominated Bristol Motor Speedway like the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports group and driver Kyle Larson. They enter the weekend 60 points above the provisional cutline, virtually but not officially locked into the Round of 12.
On less certain ground is the No. 1 Trackhouse bunch and driver Ross Chastain. They enter the Bristol Night Race on the plus side of the cutline — 19 points to the good — but Chastain has struggled to find consistent results at the self-proclaimed “World’s Fastest Half-Mile.”
That leads to two different levels of comfort entering the first elimination race of the 2025 playoffs. No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels knows talk of the new Goodyear tires will dominate the ongoing story lines around the on-track action. What he chooses to focus on, however, is what he and the No. 5 crew can impact themselves after leading 873 of the last 1,000 Bristol laps.
“What we can control is taking in the proper information at the right time,” Daniels told NASCAR.com. “Is there going to be a high level of (lap-time) fall-off or not? Do cautions impact what can happen with the strategy and the cycle? And like we saw in Gateway last week, sometimes it’s tough to know. You’re not sitting on a crystal ball to know when the next caution is going to come. So you try to make the best decision you can in the moment with the information that you have.
“We don’t want to be rigid in our thinking and even in what we’ve seen the last two races here. We just want to be very open to taking in the information to make the best decision that we can in the moment. And at the end of the day, we still have to execute on what that is.”
Chastain, Surgen and the No. 1 team qualified 13th for Saturday’s 500-lap affair, just outside of the top 10, which is awarded points at the end of Stage 1 and Stage 2. With a 19-point buffer to the cutline, Chastain and Co. are in decent shape to advance should they dodge trouble. But adding stage points to the day’s tally could go a long way toward securing a spot in the Round of 12.
“It depends on the risk in the moment,” Surgen told NASCAR.com. “I mean, we pass a couple cars and we’re right there. The way the tire acted today in practice, what I expect (Saturday) is we’re going to have a lot of guys willing to stay out on pretty high-lap-count tires, which bodes well for guys willing to take a little risk for stage points.
“Early in the race, if you get a lot of guys on the lead lap, maybe there’s less willingness to take that risk. Maybe at the end of Stage 2, when there’s only 15 cars on the lead lap, let’s say, then there’s a little higher willingness, just because the track position is not going to be as big.”
Ultimately, Saturday’s race may play into the hands of which teams adapt best through a grinding, vehicle-abusing night in the Tennessee mountains.
“Just planning for anything,” Surgen said. “Like I said, the tire is going to fall off (and) going to degrade pretty slowly, and we’re going to see guys willing to stay out. Just playing through scenarios when cautions come out or repeated cautions come out. When do you want to pit? When do you want to stay out? You can’t plan for every scenario, so you just have to have a playbook of what-ifs and that playbook can get pretty deep. Those are the type of things that I’ll review tonight and tomorrow.”
Get to the front by Lap 500. None of the last 17 races at Bristol have gone to NASCAR Overtime. Per Racing Insights, the last Bristol race to go past its scheduled distance was in April 2015.
He may not be the favorite to win, but watch out for …
BRAD KESELOWSKI. The 2012 Cup champion is searching for his first Bristol win since 2020 — and in the midst of a 51-race winless streak. But Keselowski has been stout at the “Last Great Colosseum” in recent years, finishing third in the 2024 spring race where high tire-wear played a factor and leading 109 laps in the 2022 night race. The No. 6 RFK Racing Ford has shown flashes of speed across the last month despite finishing outside the top 10 in four of the last five races. But perhaps the Bristol bullring could bring Brad back to the forefront.
Fantasy update
NASCAR Fantasy Live expert Dustin Albino provides insight for your Saturday lineup.
One of the key story lines entering the weekend was how the new right-side Goodyear tire would hold up. There were no issues throughout practice and qualifying, making it easier to assemble a lineup as track position will likely be crucial. The only changes in my lineup are adding Ryan Blaney, who was fastest over the long haul (best on 15-, 20-, 25-and 30-lap averages) in place of Chris Buescher who qualified 21st. I also dropped Chase Elliott from my lineup and inserted Bubba Wallace as my garage pick.
Lineup: Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs.
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
•NASCAR at Bristol: Key info, qualifying reports and more from doubleheader weekend | Read more • Racing Insights: Can Bell complete JGR sweep of Round of 16? | Read more
• Bubble Watch: Does a surprise elimination loom at Bristol? | Read more
• ‘Buildup of frustration’ for Bell: No. 20 driver, crew chief Stevens debrief after Gateway outburst | Read more
• Bowman: ‘Mortifying how bad we’ve been’: No. 48 driver enters Bristol below cutline | Read more
• Playoff Pulse: Who’s hot, who’s not ahead of Bristol | Read more • Turning Point to Bristol: Larson leads Hendrick charge to “Thunder Valley” | Read more
• At-track photos: The best shots from night racing at the “Last Great Colosseum” | View gallery
• Paint Scheme Preview: Fresh designs set to shine in Bristol Night Race | View gallery
• Power Rankings: An updated look at where playoff drivers stack | This week’s ranks
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Benefitting from a split-second late-race strategy decision, veteran Aric Almirola held off a mightily motivated field to claim the win in Friday night’s Food City 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs opener at Bristol Motor Speedway.
While running second to the series’ championship leader, Connor Zilisch, when a caution flag flew with 36 laps remaining, Almirola watched Zilisch pull onto pit road for fresh tires, and instead of following him into the pits as his crew expected, Almirola abruptly pulled his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota back on track at the last moment.
He then had to out-run, out-maneuver and out-last the competition — several on fresher tires — in the closing laps to claim his second victory of the season and ninth of his career. A former full-time Cup Series driver who is now competing part-time in the Xfinity Series with Gibbs, Almirola ultimately beat Haas Factory Team driver Sheldon Creed to the checkered flag by .381 seconds — marking a series record 15th runner-up finish for Creed, who is still racing for his first career win.
“Just tired of getting beat by those guys, I figured I’d try my chances with the lead,” Almirola said of his race-winning pit strategy decision. “They’ve been so fast and they fire off so fast on new tires and I just didn’t think I could beat them straight up on new tires. It took me about 20 laps to get going, so I thought my best chance was to stay out on old tires.
“We watched the last two or three races here and saw how the nine-car with [driver] Noah Gragson win with like a 100 laps on his tires,” added Almirola, whose No. 19 JGR Toyota is racing for the owner’s championship. “So, I decided to stay out when they said pit.”
Creed passed his Haas Factory Team teammate Sam Mayer with a lap remaining but was unable to catch up to Almirola. JR Motorsports driver Carson Kvapil finished fourth, followed by his teammate Zilisch, who was trying to become the first driver in series history to win five consecutive races.
Zilisch’s fifth-place finish, however, still resulted in a series record, giving him 15 consecutive top-five showings. He has a series-best nine victories on the season and maintains a 32-point advantage over another JR Motorsports teammate, Friday’s race polesitter and reigning series champion Justin Allgaier, who finished sixth and earned a series-best 11th stage win.
“It was a good day, just so hard those decisions at the end because whatever you do, everyone else is going to do the opposite,” the 19-year-old rookie Zilisch said. “We had a really good day with our WeatherTech Chevrolet, got further up above the [playoff] cutoff line and we’ll move on to next week and keep on building.”
Harrison Burton, Christian Eckes, Jeremy Clements and Brennan Poole rounded out a top 10 that included three rookies. The top seven finishers were all playoff drivers. Ten of the 12 playoff competitors finished 14th or higher.
Sammy Smith, who went into the race ranked sixth in the playoff standings, took the biggest championship hit of the night. He suffered an early problem with his No. 8 JR Motorsports Chevrolet and had to retire to the garage only 56 laps into the race with an engine issue. He’s now ranked 12th and last among the playoff contenders, 24 points below the cutline with two races remaining in this opening round.
“Unfortunate situation,” Smith said. “Very disappointed for the team. Worked so hard and to not really have a shot was frustrating. We’ll just have to do our best the next two weeks in the Playoffs and see.”
Beyond Zilisch and Allgaier, Mayer is now 50 points off the lead, and Kvapil is 69 back. Burton, in fifth place, is now separated from 10th-place Taylor Gray by only six points.
Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love and rookie Nick Sanchez are the first drivers below the cutline — both three points behind Gray. Love’s veteran teammate, Austin Hill, is 16 points back with Smith dropping into that 12th slot after round one of the seven-race title run.
The series holds its second of the three Round of 12 playoff races on Saturday, Sept. 27, at Kansas Speedway (4 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Almirola is the defending race winner.
NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Xfinity Series garage concluded without issue, confirming Almirola as the winner.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — All’s well that ends well in the case of NASCAR Cup Series title contenders Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney — for now.
The pair of past champions had a nefarious encounter last weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway as the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver spun Blaney in Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 135. While Blaney was furious over the radio in the moment, he and Larson had a cordial exchange on pit road after the race as the No. 12 Team Penske Ford rallied for a top-five while Larson placed 12th.
A week removed and an elimination race to focus on at Bristol Motor Speedway Saturday night (7:30 ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), there appear to be no leftover feelings about the incident.
“I’ve always been someone who doesn’t hold a ton of grudge,” Blaney said Friday at Bristol. “I’ve found it more healthy for me to get it out of my system right away, and then I can move on. If I hold it in, then I think about it for a long time and then that’s how things can kind of build and all that stuff. That’s just kind of how I’ve approached it. Just to have a conversation like we had last week is really all I was searching for. I think you get a lot more done having an adult conversation with somebody. Granted, if I felt like it was malicious, then maybe it’s a different conversation. But I don’t think it was. It was just a mistake of two guys running hard and I got the bad end of it.”
Larson said as much earlier in the week about the incident during a Zoom teleconference.
“We all have those moments,” Larson said Wednesday. “Every move we make throughout every corner of the race is strategical. I wouldn’t necessarily say that anybody races much different than anybody these days. We’re pushing hard. It’s coming to the end of the stage. I had made a move the lap before, which is exactly what I was trying to do that lap and it was just further back than I was lap before. I entered faster to get there, and then I wasn’t going to get there. I was just trying to get back in line and just misjudged where his left-rear corner of the car was by a foot or so.”
While Blaney could very well retaliate on track or after a race, it’s not in his blood and said that he’s a ‘spitting image’ of his father, Dave, in that they are soft spoken when the helmets are off, but in the heat of the moment, they both get really competitive because they want to win each weekend.
Instead of rubbing fenders or fisticuffs, Blaney prefers another way of getting back at those who wronged him on track.
“I would rather go out and if I feel like someone did me wrong or someone made a mistake around me, I think the biggest statement you can do is just go kick their ass the next week and like the rest of the year and do it in the right way,” Blaney said. “I don’t need to rough you up to beat you. I’m gonna beat you straight up and I think that’s the biggest statement that you can make and that’s just kind of how I always think.”
See where your favorite NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series drivers will pit this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
NASCAR Cup Series
Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Qualifying in the first half of a 39-driver field, AJ Allmendinger stole the spotlight from the NASCAR Cup Series playoff contenders who followed him around Bristol Motor Speedway on Friday afternoon.
Allmendinger toured the 0.533-mile concrete short track in 15.117 seconds (126.930 mph) to earn the top starting spot for Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race, the Round of 16 elimination race (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
The lap held up against an onslaught of playoff drivers. Ryan Blaney (126.905 mph) came closest with a lap just 0.003 seconds slower than Allmendinger’s. Austin Cindric, just 11 points above the current elimination line for the Round of 12, will start third after a lap at 126.804 mph, far better than his average Bristol starting spot of 21.4.
The Busch Light Pole Award was Allmendinger’s first of the 2025 season, first at Bristol and fifth of his career. It was also his first pole since 2015 at Watkins Glen, 10 years ago.
“We just had a really good practice,” said Allmendinger, driver of the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet. “We had a solid race in the spring, so good notes to go off of, for sure. You never know. They were saying the (softer right-side) tires were going to be a little different, but our practice was really good.
“I was pretty happy with that lap… The tire doesn’t feel a ton different. You can feel the softness — the car kind of moves around on it — but it’s not a massive difference to me. We’ll see how it races (on Saturday), once you get 125 laps on it.”
Blaney said his No. 12 Team Penske Ford felt tight in the final two corners.
“I’m proud of our lap and proud to be starting on the front row,” said Blaney, the 2023 series champion. “I wish I could have had it back and I’m sure a lot of guys say that. I just got tight in (Turns) 3 and 4…
“I think our race car is really good, too, over the long haul, and I’m just looking forward to (Saturday) night. Hopefully, we can run a good 500 laps and keep up with the race track and see what we can do.”
Non-playoff driver Ty Gibbs (126.720 mph) qualified fourth in the fastest Toyota, with six playoff drivers behind him. Kyle Larson (126.670 mph), winner of the last two Cup Series races at Bristol, was fifth, with last week’s Gateway winner Denny Hamlin (126.312 mph) sixth fastest.
William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell and Josh Berry will start sixth through 10th on the grid, respectively.
Berry is 16th in the playoff standings, 45 points below the cutline for the Round of 12 and needing a victory to advance past the Round of 16. But Berry was the fastest among the four drivers below the line.
Alex Bowman, 35 points in arrears, qualified 15th. Austin Dillon, 11 points behind Cindric, will start 23rd. And Shane van Gisbergen, 15 points below the cutline, will start 28th.
Other playoff drivers qualified as follows: Ross Chastain (13th), Tyler Reddick (14th), Chase Elliott (16th), Joey Logano (22nd) and Chase Briscoe (31st).
Haley, Blaney fastest in practice
In an incident-free practice session, Justin Haley (Group A) and Ryan Blaney (Group B) topped the leaderboard after setting the same speed at 125.354 mph.
Carson Hocevar (125.338 mph), Brad Keselowski (125.313 mph) and Michael McDowell (125.305 mph) rounded out the top five.
Chase Briscoe (125.183 mph), Denny Hamlin (125.028 mph), Chase Elliott (124.938 mph), Ty Gibbs (124.889 mph) and Ross Chastain (124.622 mph) completed the top 10.
Josh Berry was the slowest playoff driver in practice, slotting in 38th (122.146 mph) of 39 drivers who set a time.
Drivers and teams were able to collect data on Goodyear’s softer right-side tire compound, which aims to produce more wear and incorporate tire management into the strategy for Saturday night’s 500-lap race.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — After the checkered flag last weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Christopher Bell had a rare outburst on his radio, expressing anger with a seventh-place finish while his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe finished first and second.
The heat-of-moment sizzle stemmed from a good place — a burning desire to win for a driver and No. 20 team that haven’t won since March.
“We just [expletive] ran seventh with the best car on the track!” Bell radioed at Gateway. “Every [expletive] week, it’s the same [expletive].”
Bell and crew chief Adam Stevens spoke after the proverbial smoke settled and head into Saturday night’s Round of 16 cutoff race (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs “in a really good spot,” Bell said Friday.
“I think it was definitely a buildup of frustration and not performing up to our standards, and not getting the results that I think that we should get,” Bell said. “Well — not even think; should. We should get better results, and we haven’t been doing that. It was frustration.”
Bell opened the year by winning the second, third and fourth races of 2025, immediately firing off as a team that looked destined for another trip to the Championship 4. But the visits to Victory Lane vanished — save for a win in the exhibition NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in May. The No. 20 team’s last top five in a points-paying oval race came at Kansas Speedway on May 11.
“We’re all on the same team,” Bell said. “I want to win. Adam wants to win. All of my my team, we all have the same common goal. So I don’t think anybody takes it personal because we all want the same thing. And if I win, it’s good for Adam. If Adam wins, it’s good for me. So I don’t know; it’s professional sports.”
In a Friday morning interview with NASCAR.com, Stevens echoed Bell’s sentiments verbatim. He explained the context of a 29th-place finish at Darlington Raceway in the postseason opener, which added to the nuanced lead-in to last week’s brief verbal unleashing.
“It’s been a few weeks since we’ve won, and it just weighs you down,” Stevens said. “You know, little extra pressure of the playoffs, a little extenuating circumstances with not having a great finish at Darlington, even though we were quick. And having to really be mindful of points coming into Bristol with the new tire — we just don’t know what kind of weekend it’s going to be here, right? So I don’t think he had a full understanding of that in the heat of the moment, and frustrations come out. It’s a frustrating sport.”
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The lack of results to bolster the No. 20 team’s pace is a significant contributing factor to Bell’s disappointment. Hamlin has won a series-best five races this year, and Briscoe and Hamlin, respectively, won the opening playoff races at Darlington and Gateway. Bell’s confidence in his equipment hasn’t wavered, but the post-race rundowns haven’t supported the mid-race speed he has shown.
Since leading 105 laps in his March victory at Phoenix Raceway, Bell has only led a combined 113 laps in the last 24 races.
“I’m happy for my teammates, but that’s the barometer,” Bell said. “And if your teammates are out there winning races and leading laps, that shows that the cars are capable. We have the equipment. And I haven’t been leading laps and I haven’t been winning races, so there’s obviously something going on that’s keeping us from from doing that.”
What complicates that challenge is that Stevens can’t point to a singular theme holding the No. 20 team back from reaching its maximum potential.
“You just have to go track by track and week by week, and I don’t really think there’s a recurring thing there,” Stevens said. “To your point, we’ve had speed. We’ve suffered in execution here and there. And there’s lots of races and lots of tracks on the schedule, so you’ve got to take it all in stride. There’s 37 weekends if you count the All-Star Race, and you’re not going to win them all. And it comes and goes, just like anything else in professional sports.”
Stevens’ measured approach comes from 10 prior years of Cup Series crew-chiefing, a tenure that has resulted in two titles and 40 victories combined with Kyle Busch (2015-2020) and Bell (2021-present). Together, Bell and Stevens have made the Championship 4 in two of the last three seasons. To underestimate the confidence either has in one another is to ignore their past and recent successes. Per NASCAR Insights, the No. 20 Toyota ranks fifth in speed throughout the first 28 races of 2025 and places Bell as the fifth-best passer in the series.
“When we sit down and set our goals for the season, top of the sheet is to win the championship,” Stevens said. “And there’s nothing that’s happened at any point in time that’s taken that goal away. So it’s still right there in front of us. We have the cars. We have the speed. We have the driver and the team to do it, so eyes on the prize.”
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Despite entering the Cup Series Playoffs as just one of two drivers without a victory, the vibes still felt good for Alex Bowman entering the 10-race quest for the championship.
Bowman tallied top 10s in seven of the 11 races prior to the postseason and looked to be a sure-fire contender to make a run at least into the Round of 12. But that hasn’t been the case for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team and it’s primarily due to errors on pit road.
A disastrous 40-second pit stop at Darlington and another slow stop last Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway have set back Bowman entering Saturday’s first-round elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) and now faces a virtual must-win situation down 35 points to the cutline.
For this weekend, Hendrick made the call to swap all pit-crew members, minus the fueler, with the No. 77 Spire Motorsports team in hopes of solving the pit-stop puzzle.
“I wasn’t super involved in it, had some conversations, but not super deeply involved in it,” Bowman said Friday at Bristol. “Those guys have been super fast at points throughout this year and they’re all really great athletes and do a good job. We’ve just had a bad two weeks at a time that we can’t have a bad two weeks.”
After a runner-up result at Richmond, it seemed Bowman was primed to begin the prep for a walkthrough into the playoffs. However, an early crash in the regular-season finale at Daytona had Bowman sweating until the checkered flag when Ryan Blaney outdueled a handful of underdogs to keep the cutline below Bowman and lock the Tucson, Arizona native into the title battle.
But the ick hasn’t been scrubbed since Daytona, and Bowman has qualified 25th or worse in each of the first two playoff races and finished 31st (Darlington) and 26th (Gateway).
“Certainly frustrating, right?” Bowman said. “We had a really good summer and the switch turned off for us, for sure. It’s kind of mortifying how bad we’ve been. It’s embarrassing. It’s not from a lack of effort, like everybody’s working so hard at HMS and our whole team is. We’ve just not put days together like we need to. So yeah, working hard to turn that around this weekend.”
The first item on the checklist toward willing the No. 48 team into the Round of 12 is a good qualifying lap.
Bowman put down a 125.757 mph lap in Friday’s qualifying session and will roll off 15th from the grid Saturday night.
Despite the inadequate circumstances coming into Bristol, Bowman isn’t approaching the race any different than he usually does.
“It’s really not that different than we normally would,” Bowman said. “We’re in such a tough spot, it’s almost less stressful, right? It’s not like we’re really close to the cutline and you’re trying to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. We got to make something happen. Mentally going through these last couple weeks has not been a fun time for me, but mentally it’s always kind of not been a fun time for me the last couple years. Just trying to run the best we can this weekend and be as prepared as I can be to go out there and do my job.”
With the pit crew swap, there’s no animosity or hurt feelings toward the members moving over to Carson Hocevar and the No. 77 team, and Bowman hopes that it will lead to good fortunes for both himself and Spire when the green flag waves Saturday evening.
“I’m definitely friends with all those guys and appreciative for all their hard work,” Bowman said. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they had an amazing day on pit road on the 77 car and looked really good. I think for us, we needed a change, and just trying to have the best shot we can at winning this weekend.”
