Kyle Larson won again again – it seems like that’s all he does these days — this time in the Cup debut at Nashville Superspeedway, where Hendrick Motorsports’ new star drove to victory lane for the fourth week in a row.
Larson led 264 of 300 laps on Sunday to win his third straight points race, and fourth in a row overall, including the All-Star race last weekend. Larson went on to win four races in seven days after winning the $1 million All-Star race at Texas Motor Speedway. He then traveled to Ohio to win $6,000 purses in two sprint car races.
Since Alex Bowman’s victory at Dover on May 9, Rick Hendrick’s cars have been to victory lane six weeks in a row.
After a decade of dormancy, Nashville Superspeedway reopened this weekend to host its first ever Cup race. The last time NASCAR’s premier series raced in the Nashville region was at the Fairgrounds 37 years ago, when Geoff Bodine won in the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
Larson put on a show for the sold-out audience of 40,000 by doing burnouts along the entire Nashville front stretch to celebrate his victory in his new No. 5.
“There’s a lot of fans out there and we had enough rubber and enough fuel there to do a good burnout at the end,” Larson said.
Larson will go to Brandon, South Dakota, for World of Outlaws races at Huset’s Speedway on Monday and Tuesday nights.
Larson’s fourth Cup points victory of the season was his first with Valvoline on his hood, marking only the third time in 17 races this season that a non-Hendrick company has been on his car. After missing all but four races last season due to a NASCAR penalty for using a racial slur while competing in an online race, he’s virtually unsponsored.
In a Chevrolet podium sweep, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Ross Chastain finished second and Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron finished third.
“My goodness, we don’t have anything for those Chevrolets right now,” said Ford driver Aric Almirola, who finished fourth after starting from the pole.
In one of the better days for the struggling Stewart-Haas Racing squad, his teammate finished fifth. The two top-five finishes occurred on the same day that team co-owner Tony Stewart competed in his first Cup race since the outbreak began.
TRAFFIC TROUBLE
The start of the race was delayed by 10 minutes due to traffic congestion on the route to the speedway.
NASCAR asked NBC Sports to move its first Cup race of the season to a later date so that more fans could be seated before the race started. The 10-minute delay was necessary because NBCSN had an NHL playoff game scheduled for Sunday night.
Nashville Superspeedway is 28 miles east of downtown Music City and the race was a sellout at about 40,000 spectators in the grandstands, temporary seating and suites.
Xfinity Series driver Noah Gragson and the wife of Cup rookie Chase Briscoe were among those caught in the congestion and Gragson tweeted that he had “been in traffic for 2 hours. Brutal.”
Nashville held 21 Xfinity Series races and 13 Truck Series events before closing in 2011 due to a lack of a Cup date. The track is owned by Dover Motorsports, which moved one of its weekends from Delaware to Nashville in order to reopen the track and hold a Cup race for the first time.
NASCAR awarded the track a four-year sanctioning agreement.
The uniforms of NASCAR racing drivers are currently available at the following websites for a reasonable price:
