BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) — Ty Gibbs outdueled Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson in overtime Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, breaking through for his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in his 131st start.
Gibbs, the grandson of NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner and former Super Bowl-winning coach Joe Gibbs, led the final 25 laps and held off the two NASCAR Cup Series champions, who both had tires that were nearly 100 laps fresher, on a furious final restart.
Blaney,
who started from the pole position, finished second.
Larson, who led a race-high 284 of 500 laps and won the first two stages on the 0.533-mile oval, finished third and remained winless in the past 32 races. Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top five.
Gibbs became the sixth NASCAR driver to earn his first Cup victory at Bristol, joining Dale Earnhardt (1979), Rusty Wallace (1986), Ernie Irvan (1990), Elliott Sadler (2001) and Kurt Busch (2002).
While Larson excelled at the front, two of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates were struggling mightily.
William Byron started from the rear because of unapproved adjustments to his No. 24 Chevrolet, which had steering problems in practice and qualifying Saturday. Byron, who has led at every active track but Bristol, was off the pace from the start and finished five laps down.
Returning frommissing four races because of vertigo, Alex Bowman started 27th and finished last after being involved in a multicar crash started by Shane van Gisbergen.
“I was fine, just a frustrating day,” Bowman said. “Thought we were OK in practice and then obviously qualified bad and then just really struggled with the handling today. Bummer. Hate that we didn’t get a chance to work on it and make it better and finish the race, but it’s kind of outside our control. When you run that bad, stuff can happen, and it happened to us.”
The NASCAR Cup Series will race April 19 at Kansas Speedway, the first of three consecutive tracks 1.5 miles and longer. Hendrick Motorsports has won three of the past four races at Kansas with Kyle Larsonand Chase Elliott winning last year at the oval in Kansas City, Kansas.
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