This One's For Jon: Larson Caps Off Emotional Week with Dominant Win

In what was an emotional weekend for Hendrick Motorsports after the tragic passing of Jon Edwards, the team's director of communications who had served as the PR representative for Kyle Larson since 2021, Larson capped off one of the most dominant performances in recent memory with an emphatic victory in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

RESULTS: Food City 500 at Bristol

After climbing from his car, and collecting the checkered flag, Larson patted the memorial decal on the C-post of his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, and said, "Yeah, no, this one's definitely for Jon. He's just a great guy, here, so, we're going to miss him. Successful weekend, here. Wish he was going to be with us here to celebrate, but I know he'll be here celebrating with us in spirit."

Over the final 235 laps of the race, which ran green through its entirety, Larson held off Denny Hamlin, who was seeking his third consecutive NASCAR Cup Series win, by a margin of 2.250 seconds. But the victory margin wasn't indicative of how massive the beatdown was that Larson handed the field on Sunday.

"Yeah, just a flawless race once again here at Bristol for the [No.] 5 team," a winded Larson stated. "Really, really good car. That was a lot of fun. However many laps of green we ran there was a lot of fun. I was pretty comfortable with things, and then Denny came on really strong there before the pit cycle, and then just kind of kept the pressure on from there. I knew I had to make some good moves in traffic."

In all, Larson led 411 of the 500 laps of Sunday's Food City 500, and aside from three lead changes that transpired during a round of green flag pit stops during the final Stage, Larson's pass on Alex Bowman for the race lead on Lap 40 was the lone actual pass for the lead on the track all race long.

The only thing keeping Larson from leading 450-plus laps in this event was a decision by Ryan Blaney and his crew chief Jonathan Hassler to stay on the track for 48 laps as the race leader during the final green flag pit sequence.

This 1-2 finish is the seventh time that Larson and Hamlin have finished 1-2 against each other, and it marks the first time that Larson has come out on top of a 1-2 finish amongst them.

Hamlin credited Larson and his crew for executing an incredible race, and he was just glad he was able to keep the finish relatively close.

"You've got to give that team their due, and Kyle his due. Just a dominant performance, and you know, it looked like a pretty flawless day for him," Hamlin explained. "So, it looked pretty easy. It was all I had to try to keep up there. Glad we were able to give him a little bit of a run with our Progressive Toyota. But this weekend, we're all thinking about Jon Edwards' family, Al Pearce, Shige Hattori. We've lost a lot of great people in our sport over this past week. Our thoughts are with them. Wish we could have gotten one more spot, but I just wanted to keep him honest there at the end."

With the runner-up finish, Hamlin moves to within 30 points of William Byron for the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season point lead.

Ty Gibbs finished the afternoon in third-place in what was the driver's most complete race of the nine races so far this year. With his season-best finish, and first top-five of the campaign, Gibbs worked back inside of the top-20 of the championship standings heading into the offweek.

Chase Briscoe completed the Joe Gibbs Racing sweep of second position through fourth, as he registered a fourth-place run in his No. 19 Toyota Camry XSE. This marks the third fourth-place finish of Briscoe's season.

Ryan Blaney, who stretched out the final green flag pit sequence run, which allowed him to lead 48 laps on the day, was able to slice his way back up the leader board in the closing laps to finish fifth.

William Byron, Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, AJ Allmendinger, and Austin Dillon rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.

Allmendinger turned the fastest lap of the race with a 15.380 second lap time on Lap 396, which allowed him to take home the Xfinity Fastest Lap Award. Allmendinger received a bonus championship point for winning the award. Allmendinger sits 16th in the championship standings, and is just three points behind Ryan Preece, who is 14th in the points.

For Dillon, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, this is his first top-10 finish of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.

There was only one on-track incident that occurred all race long, and it wasn't much of an incident. Rookie of the Year contender Shane van Gisbergen got loose while trying to pass Cody Ware on Lap 178, and spun out in Turn 2.

SVG would eventually exit the race after completing 208 laps.

The biggest heartbreak of the race belonged to polesitter Alex Bowman, who led the opening 39 laps of the race and looked to have a solid top-five car under him on Sunday at Bristol. Around the 300-lap mark in the 500-lap event, the engine under the hood of his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet went south, which sent him behind the wall after completing 343 laps.

Bowman would be credited with a disappointing 37th-place finish.

The NASCAR Cup Series will enjoy its lone offweek next weekend as the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series will be in action at Rockingham Speedway. The next race for the NASCAR Cup Series will come at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, April 27.

The Jack Link's 500 at Talladega will be televised on FOX with the broadcast coverage set to kick off at 3:00 PM ET.

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