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Kyle Larson, driver of the #5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 23, 2025 in Homestead, Florida. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)
(Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

The Big 6: Questions Answered After Kyle Larson Goes 2-for-3 at Homestead

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Who… should you be talking about after the race?

He dominated (and won) Friday night’s (March 21) Craftsman Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He dominated Saturday’s (March 22) Xfinity Series race, too, but finished fourth after a late caution allowed Justin Allgaier to sneak past on the final restart.

He didn’t dominate Sunday, but it didn’t matter. Homestead-Miami has been Kyle Larson’s personal playground in recent years, and on Sunday (March 23), he got the Cup trophy to show for it. 

Larson’s No. 5 came alive on long green-flag runs, and he knew he’d need one to get to the lead after the final round of pit stops. He got it, with the last 51 laps running caution-free. Larson ran down Bowman, who led a total of 43 laps, and took the lead when Alex Bowman brushed the wall with seven to go. 

Larson ran the extreme high line all day, touching the wall several times and taking the paint off of his right rear fender but made that line work, pulling away easily in the closing laps.

Bowman was critical of his mistake, but it likely only allowed the inevitable to happen sooner. Larson had the fastest car in the closing laps, contending with Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and Bubba Wallace to get to Bowman. He led a total of six times for 19 laps.

Larson’s 30th career win makes him the third-winningest driver for owner Rick Hendrick, with whom he has 24 victories, trailing only NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

On the other hand… 

After a strong start to 2025, Ryan Blaney would probably like a do-over. His best finish in the last four weeks is 19th at Circuit of the Americas. 

Sunday looked like things might turn around for Blaney, who failed to finish the previous two races after an engine failure and a crash. He had a dominant car early, winning stage one, finishing third in stage two and leading a race-high 124 laps. He had the car to beat.

But an engine failure on lap 208 dashed Blaney’s hopes for a turnaround. Two engine failures in three weeks is highly uncommon in today’s NASCAR, especially since no other Fords have suffered a similar fate. 

The good news for Blaney is that the next stop is Martinsville Speedway, where he’s been the class of the field in recent races. He’s going to need to stop the bleeding before it erodes his or his team’s confidence.

What… does this mean for the points standings?

William Byron continues to lead the standings, but there are new players challenging him after Homestead. Larson moves into second, 36 behind his teammate, while Bowman moves into third.

Tyler Reddick dropped one spot to fourth after his eighth-place run, and Christopher Bell tumbled from second to fifth after an early spin left him with a 29th-place finish.

Chase Elliott fell from fourth to sixth this week, 63 points behind Byron. Wallace gained four spots to sit seventh as he’s showing good consistency to open the year. Hamlin, Chris Buescher and Blaney round out the top 10.

Blaney only fell three spots after his engine failure, but he’s been in a slide. He was second just three weeks ago leaving Circuit of the Americas, just two points out of the lead. After finishes of 28th, 35th and 36th in the last three weeks, he has lost 80 points to Byron since then.

As for the playoffs, Bell is a lock with three wins, and Byron, Josh Berry and Larson are currently in with one victory apiece.

Where… did he come from? 

A trio of unexpected drivers made statements at Homestead. AJ Allmendinger has always been solid at Homestead, so his top 10 shouldn’t be a big surprise. Allmendinger ran inside the top 10 for much of the day, though a vibration saw him fade a bit midrace before coming back in the final stage. He’s now the only driver to finish in the top 10 in all four Next Gen races at Homestead.

Pulling off slightly stealthier top 10s were ninth-place Ryan Preece with his second top 10 in a row and Justin Haley with his first top 10 of 2025. 

Preece is showing some chops with RFK Racing so far. He opened the season with a flip in the Daytona 500 but has posted top 15s in his last three starts. Having a well-equipped team behind him is allowing Preece to hint at the talent he’s got.

Meanwhile, Spire Motorsports has shown marked improvement this year. Among their three teams, they have a top five and a couple of top 10s to go with a pole from Michael McDowell, but their season is better than the results. They have qualified well and run decently, but they’ve also had their share of small-team bad luck. Still, there’s good reason to watch the team this year.

When… was the moment of truth?

While it’s hard to call them a deciding factor this week, pit road issues continued to be a bigger part of the storyline than teams would have liked.

Some of the pit strategy problems this year didn’t originate on pit road. Untimely cautions have hurt drivers in the midst of a pit stop cycle. Sunday was the first race in 2025 when the field completed a green-flag pit cycle without a caution flag gumming up the works. From that angle, this week was much smoother, with the cycles being in the hands of the teams and not the action out on the track.

That doesn’t mean there were no problems in the pits. A four-car incident during the stage one caution left Joey Logano and Berry completing their stops facing backwards and both lost track position getting their cars checked and righted. Larson also got minor damage in the dustup.

Daniel Suarez spun entering pit road in stage two under green. Suarez had been running in the top five at the time of the stop, but he finished 22nd after the incident. Logano lost more time with a slow green flag stop in stage two; he did eventually get back onto the lead lap, finishing 14th.

A handful of drivers also drew penalties in the pits. Zane Smith, JJ Yeley, Byron and Austin Cindric were penalized for speeding. Carson Hocevar’s No. 77 team had too many crewmen over the wall. Elliott was penalized for a pit entry violation.

While not every issue ruined the drivers’ days, for teams already struggling, they only made it more difficult. Overall, there were far fewer issues than a week ago, butthere were still plenty of wrinkles to be ironed out.

Why… should you be paying attention this week?

Martinsville is next for the Cup Series. On the schedule since 1949, only Daytona International Speedway has hosted as many Cup races as Martinsville’s 154.

Who to watch? Hamlin is the active win leader at Martinsville with five, but his last win came a decade ago. Keep a closer eye on Blaney, who has two wins in the last three races at Martinsville and leads all active drivers with an 8.3 average finish.

If it’s a dark horse you’re looking for, look no further than Briscoe. Briscoe doesn’t have a win at The Paperclip yet, but he has five top 10s in eight Cup starts and has some momentum coming out of Homestead.

Another interesting tidbit to pay attention to at Martinsville will be how NASCAR handles the approval process for drivers who have been out of the sport for a few seasons. 

Approval to race first showed itself as an issue at the Daytona 500, where NASCAR didn’t approve veteran Mike Wallace to attempt the race. Some questioned the decision, but NASCAR wouldn’t allow Wallace, who has not had a Cup start since 2015, to run.

As it turns out, though, the decision doesn’t mean that Wallace, or another driver who hasn’t raced in a while, can’t ever make another start. They just can’t step into a car that they have never driven in the Next Gen, at a high-speed track until they make a start at a short track and get approved for more.

The first driver to test the process will be Casey Mears, as he attempts the Martinsville race with owner Carl Long as part of a bid to reach the milestone of 500 Cup Series starts, for which he needs 11 more races. Some fans questioned why Mears will be allowed to race when Wallace wasn’t, but the driver explained in a post:

NASCAR hasn’t elaborated on the re-approval process, so what they will deem a successful weekend is still a question mark. Will Mears simply need to log laps or will mistakes give NASCAR pause? Hopefully, fans will have an answer after next week’s race.

How… did this race stack up?

In comparison to past races at Homestead, this year’s finish was about average, with Larson beating Bowman by 1.205 seconds, which is a large gap on the track.

The closest margin for the Next Gen came a year ago for Reddick, who beat Blaney to the line by .241 seconds, but the closest finish ever happened back in 2005, when Greg Biffle battled Mark Martin for the win and came out on top by just .017 seconds. Carl Edwards holds the largest margin at HMS, beating Kevin Harvick by 7.548 seconds in 2008.

Homestead has, in general, been better in the Next Gen era than previously in terms of finishes. Since being dropped as the season finale following the 2019 season, there has been some momentum around restoring it as the deciding race.

There’s certainly some merit to that; the weather in Miami in November is generally good, and the racing is also generally good.

The crowd on Sunday was certainly sparse, which would likely change for a title race, but it’s not a great look for a track trying to secure that.

While Homestead is among a handful of tracks that have raced well with the Next Gen car that also have weather conducive to a November race, it seems like a little of the nostalgia for it comes more from the title races and championship battles than from truly competitive finishes. Homestead has hosted more races with the first- and second-place cars separated by over a second than under that.

What it has offered is solid racing all day with comers and goers, particularly when NASCAR hasn’t intervened with a heavy hand on the caution lights. Crashes aren’t a foregone conclusion like they are at the superspeedways, but the racing is still unpredictable because as the track changes, different players emerge. If you want a side-by-side drag race to the checkers, Homestead might not be the track for you, but it has come into its own as a good venue for the current car.

This week’s event was typical Homestead — the finish wasn’t particularly close, but there was some solid racing throughout the field throughout the day.

Overall, would the track produce a door-banger of a finish for the title? Probably not. But it would likely give a decent, organic race decided by the teams. Maybe the title race shouldn’t have a permanent location at all, but Homestead should be in the mix.

Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.

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