SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Kyle Larson had been mired in a slump ever since his disastrous Memorial Day Double, but his second trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2025 was bound to show promise.
He won his first Brickyard 400 in 2024 and entered Sunday (July 25) with just one goal: to become the fourth NASCAR Cup driver to earn back-to-back wins at the Brickyard.
The No. 5 car qualified 13th on Saturday (July 27), and while the start of the race was rocky, Larson gradually worked his way toward the front of the field for the beginning of the final stage.
“The beginning of the race didn’t go well,” Larson said. “I didn’t have a good start, and I was like, ‘damn, that’s maybe going to kill our race strategy,’ but our team just did a good job with the strategy that we were on, and we executed the green flag cycle and was able to kind of maximize what we had going on.”
With the final round of pit stops taking place between laps 117 and 121, Larson eventually cycled out to second place behind Bubba Wallace. The No. 23 car had a four-second lead with seven laps to go, and it looked like Larson’s hopes of a second 400 would fall one spot short.
But then, the skies opened up.
The race was halted for 18 minutes and 11 seconds as the jet dryers removed the moisture from turn 1 and the frontstretch. The race resumed with a two-lap overtime shootout, and Larson and Wallace were dead even through the first turn.
“The first (restart), (Bubba) was in first gear on both of them, but the first one he was just a little bit faster paced to the restart zone, so I stayed second gear and he got a launch, and I was just able to kind of barely hang on his right rear quarter and then drag him back and kind of pull my momentum to halfway past him,” Larson said. “I was just hoping that he could maybe have a moment underneath me and get loose and I would have the momentum to get by him.”
That momentum didn’t last into turn 2, and Wallace ran a perfect corner to clear himself to the lead on the backstretch. But the field had the rerack and try again, as a multi-car crash brought out yet another caution.
By this point, the leaders were close on fuel; it had been nearly 50 laps since their final pit stops of the race. And while Larson pitted two laps later than Wallace, and theoretically had more gas in the tank, running out was a huge concern for both drivers.
“I was praying that he’d run out of fuel, but I didn’t want to run out of fuel myself either,” Larson remarked.
William Byron, who pushed Wallace on the final restart, ran out of gas and finished 16th. Josh Berry, who pushed Larson on the final restart, also ran out of gas and limped to 22nd. But the top two had enough fuel to go the distance, and Wallace held off Larson by .222 seconds to score his third Cup win and his first since 2022.
In the end, the final restarts proved to be the difference.
I had the (best) momentum I could’ve had on the first restart and still couldn’t clear him, so it was going to be hard no matter what,” Larson said. “But that’s just Indy, and it’s just a difficult place to pass, but it’s also kind of fun because the team comes into play and the strategy and pit crew, all that matters.”
A runner-up finish, especially in a crown jewel, is a tough pill to swallow for anyone, but Sunday was the clearest sign that Larson and the No. 5 team have begun to emerge from their summer slumber.
“It is what it is,” Larson said. “I’ll take it; I won with some good fortune last year. …
“So to finish second today, it’s OK.”
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf