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Kyle Larson Outduels Teammate Alex Bowman in Closing Laps at Homestead

Toby Christie

Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

It wasn't always pretty, and it certainly wasn't a perfect run in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway for Kyle Larson, but the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was just good enough exactly when he needed to be in order to capture his first victory of the 2025 season.

RESULTS: Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead

Larson battered the outside SAFER barrier with the right side of his race car all race long, including several times in the closing laps, while trying to chase down his teammate Alex Bowman for the race lead. However, when Bowman collided with the outside wall a couple of times within the final 10 laps of the race, Larson become the best car on track.

With seven laps remaining, Larson took the race lead, and he wouldn't look back as he charged to a win by a margin of 1.205 seconds over Bowman.

It was far from perfect. I gave up a spot and a half, almost two spots there by getting in the wall too many times. I knew I wasn't going to get the best restart there. I knew I wasn't good on the short runs and just thought if I could hold off [Denny Hamlin] and [Bubba Wallace] behind me, you know, I could get ringing around the top," Larson said in his post-race interview.

Catching the outside wall wasn't the only adversity Larson had to overcome on the path to picking up his 30th career NASCAR Cup Series win. Larson had to start from the 14th position after an uncharacteristically subpar qualifying run on Saturday, and Larson sustained damage in a pit road incident with Josh Berry and Joey Logano on Lap 84.

Even with a hole sliced through the rocker panel on his No. 5 Chevrolet due to the pit road incident, Larson was able to buckle down, and continue ripping the top and in the end, he and his team were rewarded with a victory, which locks them into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.

"Just kind of had to keep plugging away at what I know and what's good for me," Larson explained. "So just proud of myself, proud of the team. Just a lot of gritty, hard work there today between damage on pit road, you know, qualifying bad, bad restarts, all that stuff."

While Larson walked away from Sunday's race happy, Bowman was left feeling like he had given one away.

"I guess I choked that one away," Bowman groaned. "Just burned my stuff up. Saw the 5 coming, so moved around a little bit. Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit it hard with the right front and ended up just bending something enough that I lost a lot of right front feel and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad.

"So I hate that for this Ally 48 group. They deserve better than that. Just a couple of mistakes there. I felt like we were okay all day. That last run was the best we were."

While it wasn't the win he was hoping to be able to secure, Sunday's runner-up finish was the latest in a long line of great results for Bowman early in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. Bowman is now up to five top-10 finishes through six races in 2025, and that consistency has him sitting third in the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season standings exiting Homestead.

Bubba Wallace finished third in Sunday's race, and while he failed to snap what is now an 85-race winless drought, the 23XI Racing driver was in the mix. Wallace had the second-most laps led (56) of anyone in the field, and after getting past by Bowman with 33 laps to go, he held on for his first top-five finish of the season.

Wallace is now seventh in the championship standings as he vaulted up four spots with the third-place run.

Chase Briscoe ended the race in fourth, and he was followed by Denny Hamlin in fifth.

Chris Buescher, AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Preece, and Justin Haley rounded out the top-10 finishers in Sunday's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

With his second top-10 finish of the season, which have come in consecutive race weekends, Preece now sits in the final place above the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff cutline, as he is 16th in the championship standings after Homestead. Preece doesn't have much margin for error though, as he is currently winning a tiebreaker in a three-way tie for 16th in the standings.

While a late-race pit road speeding penalty led to William Byron finishing outside of the top-10 in 12th, the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, was able to maintain his NASCAR Cup Series point lead, as he'll head into next weekend's race at Martinsville Speedway with a 36-point advantage over Larson.

The hard-luck award of the race has to go to Ryan Blaney, who flat-out dominated the Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but aside from a Stage 1 win, had nothing to take away from Sunday's race to show for his efforts.

Blaney led a race-high 124 laps, but his engine detonated on Lap 208 while he was running in the third position. In an instant, his hopeful first win of the season turned into his second DNF for an engine failure in his last three races.

Over his last three races, Blaney has failed to finish a race as he also suffered a crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in addition to his blown engines at Phoenix Raceway and Sunday at Homestead.

Sunday's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway featured the second-most lead changes in the history of the track's 27 NASCAR Cup Series events, second only to last fall's Straight Talk Wireless 400, which featured 33 lead changes.

The race was slowed by caution four times, the first caution came for a spin by Christopher Bell on the frontstretch at Lap 70.

Bell, who has three wins this season, struggled mightily the rest of the afternoon, and finished 29th, one lap off the pace.

The race was stopped twice for the Stage 1 and 2 breaks, and the final caution of the day was for Blaney's engine expiring on Lap 209.

Up next for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, March 30. That race will be televised on FS1, and can be streamed on the FOX Sports App with a valid television provider login. Television coverage for the Cook Out 400 is set to begin at 3:00 PM ET.

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Toby Christie
TOBY CHRISTIE

Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.

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