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March 23, 2025
By Holly Cain NASCAR Wire Service
Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images
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 a victory in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 NASCAR Cup Series race.
Larson was able to seize 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 series trophy of the year.
“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 [Bowman], he may make a mistake and he caught the wall there and I got around him easier than I expected to,” the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Larson 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 from pole position, 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 got 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 okay 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 proving to be 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 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.
He ended up 36th of the 37 cars, the 2023 season champion suffering his third straight DNF of the 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 [Hamlin] 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.”
Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing’s Chris Buescher rallied to a sixth-place finish, followed by Kaulig Racing’s A.J. Allmendinger, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, RFK’s Ryan Preece and Spire Motorsports’ Justin Haley.
With the win Larson moved into second place in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, 36 points behind Hendrick teammate, 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, whose 30 career wins are now second only to NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon (93) and Jimmie Johnson (83) among Hendrick drivers.
“Just super pumped,” Larson said. “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.”
The heartbreak Larson referred to was his 2-for-3 showing in his three-peat attempt. He won Friday’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race and suffered a gut-wrenching near-miss in Saturday’s NASCAR 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 (Tenn.) 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, ironically accomplishing the feat at Bristol in 2010 and 2017.
The NASCAR Cup Series returns to action next Sunday at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway for the first short track race of the season, the Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Byron is the defending race winner.
NASCAR Cup Series Race – Straight Talk Wireless 400
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Homestead, Florida
Sunday, March 23, 2025
- (14) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 267.
- (1) Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 267.
- (9) Bubba Wallace, Toyota, 267.
- (4) Chase Briscoe, Toyota, 267.
- (23) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 267.
- (11) Chris Buescher, Ford, 267.
- (10) AJ Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 267.
- (20) Tyler Reddick, Toyota, 267.
- (31) Ryan Preece, Ford, 267.
- (21) Justin Haley, Chevrolet, 267.
- (17) Zane Smith, Ford, 267.
- (5) William Byron, Chevrolet, 267.
- (30) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 267.
- (12) Joey Logano, Ford, 267.
- (28) Erik Jones, Toyota, 267.
- (3) Noah Gragson, Ford, 267.
- (2) Josh Berry, Ford, 267.
- (18) Chase Elliott, Chevrolet, 267.
- (8) Austin Cindric, Ford, 267.
- (26) Michael McDowell, Chevrolet, 267.
- (22) Kyle Busch, Chevrolet, 267.
- (33) Daniel Suarez, Chevrolet, 267.
- (7) John Hunter Nemechek, Toyota, 267.
- (27) Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Chevrolet, 267.
- (13) Ty Gibbs, Toyota, 267.
- (32) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 266.
- (34) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 266.
- (24) Cole Custer, Ford, 266.
- (16) Christopher Bell, Toyota, 266.
- (29) Todd Gilliland, Ford, 266.
- (25) Ross Chastain, Chevrolet, 266.
- (35) Shane Van Gisbergen #, Chevrolet, 266.
- (19) Riley Herbst #, Toyota, 265.
- (36) Cody Ware, Ford, 265.
- (37) JJ Yeley, Chevrolet, 263.
- (6) Ryan Blaney, Ford, Engine, 207.
- (15) Carson Hocevar, Chevrolet, Engine, 184.
Average Speed of Race Winner: 131.876 mph.
Time of Race: 3 Hrs, 2 Mins, 13 Secs. Margin of Victory: 1.205 Seconds.
Caution Flags: 4 for 27 laps.
Lead Changes: 27 among 9 drivers.
Lap Leaders: A. Bowman 1-8;R. Blaney 9-32;J. Berry 33;Z. Smith 34-36;K. Larson 37-40;R. Blaney 41-71;A. Bowman 72;R. Blaney 73-83;A. Bowman 84;C. Hocevar 85-88;A. Bowman 89-94;R. Blaney 95-117;D. Hamlin 118-124;K. Larson 125;J. Berry 126;R. Blaney 127-161;D. Hamlin 162-168;W. Byron 169;K. Larson 170-172;D. Hamlin 173;K. Larson 174-176;B. Wallace 177-212;A. Bowman 213;B. Wallace 214-215;K. Larson 216;B. Wallace 217-234;A. Bowman 235-260;K. Larson 261-267.
Leaders Summary (Driver, Times Lead, Laps Led): Ryan Blaney 5 times for 124 laps; Bubba Wallace 3 times for 56 laps; Alex Bowman 6 times for 43 laps; Kyle Larson 6 times for 19 laps; Denny Hamlin 3 times for 15 laps; Carson Hocevar 1 time for 4 laps; Zane Smith 1 time for 3 laps; Josh Berry 2 times for 2 laps; William Byron 1 time for 1 lap.
Stage #1 Top Ten: 12,48,19,5,2,24,16,21,4,22
Stage #2 Top Ten: 11,5,12,24,23,48,2,9,77,45
