Remember that sluggish start to the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for Kyle Larson? Yeah, forget about it. Any question about whether the No. 1 seed would advance to the Round of 12 was put to rest in Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol as Larson led a mind-numbing 462 laps in the 500-lap event.
At no point over the final green flag run, which was 162 laps, did Larson’s potential win ever look in doubt, and the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 cruised to the victory by more than seven seconds over his HMS teammate Chase Elliott.
RELATED: Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Race Results
To make a long story short, Larson executed one of the biggest ass-kickings in recent NASCAR Cup Series memory on Saturday night.
“…Man, that was just great execution all weekend by the team,” Larson explained after celebrating on the front stretch with his son Owen. “You know, practiced good. You have to qualify good, we did that. 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.”
How dominant was the win for Larson on Saturday night? His 462 laps led were the most laps led by a Bristol Motor Speedway race winner since Cale Yarborough led 495 of the 500 laps in 1977. Overall, Larson’s win featured the fourth-most laps led by a race winner in the history of the track, which dates back to the 1961 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Yarborough led all 500 laps at Bristol in 1973, in addition to the 495 laps he led in 1977, and Fred Lorezen led 494 laps in 1964.
Bubba Wallace was the highest-finishing non-Playoff contender in third, and he was followed by Denny Hamlin, and Christopher Bell inside the top-five.
Ryan Blaney, Ryan Preece, Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman, and Ross Chastain rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.
This race marked the final race of the Round of 16 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, which meant it was the end of the line for four drivers in the Playoff race. The four drivers eliminated from Playoff contention on Saturday night were Ty Gibbs (-11 points), Martin Truex Jr. (-21 points), Brad Keselowski (-37), and Harrison Burton (-54).
For Truex, who is retiring from full-time NASCAR Cup Series competition at the end of the season, his night and Playoff hopes were derailed by a pit road speeding penalty. As a result of the penalty, Truex, who had been running second to Larson, was sent to the back of the back. And on a night when it was extremely hard to pass, he could never recover.
Truex hates that a mistake by him led to the elimination of his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team from the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
“It’s so tricky when you’re going from that curved section to the straight to get your lights. And it’s on me, obviously,” Truex explained. “It’s my mistake. They said we were going to have to run second or third there to have a chance, and I don’t know if we could have done it, but it would have been nice to see.
“Just really sad for my guys. They work so hard. We had a really strong car tonight, and we got a lot of stage points. We did what we needed there. Just hate I screwed it up.”
Obviously, with the race win, Larson advances to the Round of 12, which begins next weekend at Kansas Speedway. Larson will be joined in the Playoffs Round of 12 by Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and Daniel Suarez.
Hamlin came into the race six points below the cutline after suffering a miserable opening two races of the Round of 16. However, he turned things around on Saturday night with a solid fourth-place finish.
“…My aspiration was to win it, but it looked like [Larson] there just was better than all of us,” Hamlin said after the race. “Yeah, solid car. I thought we were really good towards the middle stages, and then there at the end, just got too loose and couldn’t hang on to kind of what we had there. But overall, top-5 day, good stage points, kind of in the mix, just not really as good as what we’ve been here the last couple of times. But overall I thank this whole FedEx Toyota team for giving me something I could move on with.”
Despite a frustrating night, where he finished 31st in the race, Suarez was able to score enough points to be the final driver to move onto the Round of 12. Suarez said unfortunately his No. 99 car just wasn’t very fast from the drop of the race weekend, and with the lack of practice, they just couldn’t get it dialed in heading into Saturday night’s race.
“It was a struggle,” Suarez said of his race. “Since yesterday when we unloaded the car for first practice, we just didn’t have the speed. As you know, with a short amount of practice, qualifying, and going to the race, if you don’t have 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, and 32nd all night long, and that’s what we had. Luckily we had a great Atlanta, decent Watkins Glen after a broken wheel, and we were able to build a cushion, and we definitely used every single point out of that cushion.”
The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 kicks off next weekend with the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, which is set for Sunday, September 29. That race will be televised on USA Network with coverage kicking off at 3 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the radio broadcast of that race.
