Kyle Larson wins NASCAR’s first Nashville Cup race, full results and recap

It was a race of blown brake rotors and cut tires at Nashville Superspeedway, a track that hosted its first NASCAR Cup race on Sunday.

The Ally 400 winner didn’t blow any rotors. Kyle Larson wasn’t braking much, leading 264 of 300 laps, including the final one, to win his fourth race of the Cup Series season.

He finished with a 4.3 second lead over Ross Chastain, who finished in second. William Byron finished in third.

Larson’s No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels was on the radio reminding Larson to conserve fuel at the end of the race as he stayed out front for the final 78 laps. No unexpected cautions came to bunch the field during that time.

So it was up to Larson and his team not to make any mistakes, including maneuvering through a mild drama in the final 50 laps in which debris was stuck on the leader’s grille and causing the car to overheat. Larson slid behind a lapped car, the debris blew off and he was back to sailing away with another win.

“We never really had to run behind people, so I don’t know,” Larson responded on NBCSN when asked if the win felt dominant. “If one of my teammates got out front again, it would have been hard to pass them.”

Byron was running in second late in the race, and could have potentially put up another 1-2 Hendrick Motorsports finish, as the organization has done in the last four races. Team owner Rick Hendrick said he wished Byron had “a little bit of gas” to stay ahead of Chastain at the end of the race for another top-two, still called it “pretty flawless all day long” for the No. 5 team.

“They’ve been in full stride here for the last seven, eight weeks, and really all year,” Hendrick said. “It’s good to finish it off.”

Hendrick, Larson and Daniels also all commented on the crowd at Nashville, which sold out its 40,000 seat capacity for NASCAR’s return to the track since the last races there for the Xfinity and Trucks Series in 2011.

Traffic issues for fans arriving at the 1.33-mile track in Lebanon, Tenn. forced NASCAR to delay its green flag start time by 10 minutes, and the grandstands appeared packed throughout the race. Hendrick said it felt like “old times.”

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“I got trapped trying to get in,” Hendrick said. “But it just felt good. It felt like we were back years ago with fans excited, (standing) shoulder to shoulder.”

Although Larson dominated, the track was no easy feat for most teams. At least six teams, including Ryan Blaney, Ryan Preece, Cole Custer and Chase Briscoe suffered from broken brake rotors. Leading laps helped take that edge off for Larson.

He started fifth after qualifying, and quickly jumped up to the lead within the first 10 laps, then pitted when a caution came out at the end of the first stage for Chris Buescher and Justin Haley, who crashed into the outside wall when Haley’s brake rotor went down (Buescher said he hit it on the track). Larson finished in third in the first stage, which was won by Chase Elliott, then won the second stage through multiple cautions.

He now leads the Cup Series in wins with four.

Race results

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