Ty Gibbs won Sunday’s (April 12) Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, holding off Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson in the closing laps. The win is Gibbs’ first in 131 Cup starts.
Blaney led Gibbs by a little less than a second until the caution flag flew with 24 laps to go for a spinning Chase Elliott in turn 2. Larson beat Blaney off of pit road, though five cars, including Gibbs, Carson Hocevar and Tyler Reddick, stayed out.
Gibbs held off Blaney and Larson on the ensuing restart before the final yellow of the race came out for a spinning Riley Herbst on lap 497.
That forced Gibbs to hold off Blaney in overtime, and though Blaney drew even with Gibbs multiple times, he didn’t have enough bite to pass him for the win.
“Just awesome,” Gibbs told FS1. “Very honored to be in this situation. Everybody [that’s] a part of it, they’ve been with me since I was a kid.”
Blaney had to recover from a pair of bad pit stops, the latter of which dropped him all the way back to seventh, before driving back to the front.
Blaney, Larson, Reddick and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top five, while Todd Gilliland, Joey Logano, Ryan Preece, Denny Hamlin and Hocevar rounded out the top 10 finishers.
Blaney started the race from the pole and led 190 laps before coming up less than six one-hundredths of a second shy of the win.
“I got free into [turn] 3 two or three laps before the last yellow,” Blaney said. “That kind of cost me some time. I gave it my best shot on the last restart. Got a good restart and was close. Just couldn’t get it done.”
Larson led the most laps (284) of anyone on the day and swept the stages.
“Blaney had by far the best car, his pit crew just kept putting him behind all day,” Larson said. “Allowed us to lead a lot of laps and get those stage wins. Just knew it was going to be difficult to hold him off ever. The strategy got kind of crazy there at the end. We took a third-place car and finished third.”
A lap 160 crash took Alex Bowman, who was making his first start since COTA on March 1 due to vertigo symptoms, out of the race. Bowman briefly was on pit road before being ruled out and finishing last of 37 drivers.
Food City 500 Results
The NASCAR Cup Series will return at Kansas Speedway on April 19, with coverage on FOX at 2 p.m. ET.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.
When Larson restarted just behind the Gibblet for the G-W-C, Blaney’s fate was all but sealed.