By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Just Kyle Larson doing Kyle Larson things.
It was just utter dominance for the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway as he led an astounding 462 of 500 laps en route to his fifth win of the 2024 season and second overall on the high-banked half-mile.
Larson rolled off from second-place to start the night behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman, but on lap 33, he vaulted to the lead and the rest is history.
He would ultimately finish 7.088 seconds ahead of another Hendrick teammate in Chase Elliott, with Bubba Wallace finishing the best of the non-Playoff drivers in third.
“Man, that was just great execution all weekend by the team,” Larson said. “Practiced good. You’ve got to qualify good; we did that. Yeah, just had a great car. Thanks to the whole 5 team. They’re the best in the business.
“We dominate a lot of races but we might not close them all out, so it feels really good to close one out here in this Hendrickcars.com Chevy. We’ve got Rick Hendrick here today, too. He hasn’t been to many races this year. And Darrell Jackson, he’s our hype man, he’s here, as well.
“Just a phenomenal car, could kind of manage my stuff and then really pass some cars there at the end.
Denny Hamlin was able to overcome his Playoff points deficit entering the night with a fourth-place finish to move on to the next round of the Playoffs and keep his hopes of challenging for his elusive first championship alive.
“My aspirations were to win it – but it looked like the 5 (Kyle Larson) there was better than all of us,” said Hamlin. “Solid car. I thought we were really good towards the middle of the stages, and then at the end, got too loose and couldn’t hang onto what we had.
“Overall, top-five day, good stage points – kind of in the mix, just not really as good as we’ve been here the last few times, but overall I want to thank this whole FedEx Toyota team for giving me something I can move on with.”
Christopher Bell rounded out the top-five finishers, having clinched his spot in the Playoffs earlier in the race.
The remainder of the top-10 went to Ryan Blaney, Ryan Preece, Chase Briscoe, Bowman, and Ross Chastain.
Further down the running order were the other Playoff drivers, with Austin Cindric finishing 13th, Ty Gibbs finishing 15th, William Byron finishing 17th, Tyler Reddick in 20th, Martin Truex, Jr. in 24th, Brad Keselowski in 26th, Joey Logano in 28th, Daniel Suarez in 31st, and Harrison Burton coming home in 35th place.
Briscoe and Suarez would snag the final two transfer spots into the Round of 12, as Briscoe overcame a slow pit stop in the final stage of the race, charging back into the top-10 to earn himself enough points to advance and keep his Cinderella story alive.
“It wasn’t really stressful,” Briscoe said. I knew our Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang Dark Horse was really, really good and even when we had that bad pit stop, we came out 13th or 14th and I felt like I could drive back up there. At the end, probably bled three or four spots just trying to not do anything stupid. It felt like both arms got a Tetanus shot.
“Overall, it was a great night for us. Hopefully, people will start taking us serious. I truthfully feel like we can battle for the championship, so hopefully tonight proved that. I hate that we had to kind of dig ourselves out of a hole after Atlanta, but hopefully can go on to Kansas and start this next round strong.
I feel like we can beat anybody on any given day when we put it together from start to finish. Obviously, tonight we had some hiccups, but we were still able to have a good finish and that’s what this championship run is gonna be all about, so go on to the next one.”
Suarez, on the other hand, was the definition of never give up.
His 36-point advantage coming into the weekend was all but erased in short order as his No. 99 team battled handling issues all night long. Despite teetering on the edge of elimination, with a little help in the form of some of the other Playoff drivers finding trouble of their own, he was able to stave off an early Playoff exit and lives to fight another day.
“It was a struggle,” Suarez said. “When we unloaded in first practice, we just didn’t have the speed. With a short amount of practice, qualifying, and going into the race, if you don’t have the speed out of the trailer, it’s very, very difficult to bring it back to speed.
“We made it better, but it wasn’t good enough. We were running 30th, 28th, 32nd all night long and that’s what we had. Luckily we had a great Atlanta, and a decent Watkins Glen after a broken wheel and we were able to build a cushion.
“We definitely used every single point out of that cushion.”
On the other side of the coin were the drivers that will be heading home with their Playoff hopes extinguished.
The Joe Gibbs Racing duo of Gibbs and Truex ran afoul of NASCAR by speeding on pit road, first by Gibbs on Lap 130 and then Truex on Lap 333. Neither were able to overcome getting relegated to the back of the pack on a night where track position made all the difference.
Keselowski’s No. 6 RFK Racing team just seemed to miss the boat altogether as they battled handling problems from the get go, falling a lap down in the first stage and his night just got worse from there.
As for Burton, mechanical issues did him in when a power steering failure forced him behind the wall and although he would return to the track several laps later, all he could do is just run out the rest of the laps.
The remaining Cup Series Playoff contenders head off to Kansas Speedway next weekend to start the next round of the postseason, with races following at Talladega and the Charlotte Roval before the Playoff field is cut down again.
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