Who… should you be talking about after the checkered flag?
He has come close before … and at times much further away, but on Sunday (April 12) at Bristol Motor Speedway, Ty Gibbs finally put it all together to snatch the win away from Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson, who had been the two dominant drivers of the day before a late caution changed everything.
On that caution, which flew with just 23 laps to go, Gibbs stayed on track while both Blaney and Larson elected to pit for tires. While both were able to climb back to the front to challenge Gibbs, he held on through one more caution and restart to take the win in the Food City 500 in overtime, beating Blaney by .055 seconds in a drag race off the final turn.
It is Gibbs’ first career Cup Series victory in his 131st career start. He’s the second driver to win for Joe Gibbs racing this year, joining Denny Hamlin. It’s the first time since 2002 (Kurt Busch) that a driver earned his first career Cup win at Bristol.
Early in the day, Larson had the dominant car, sweeping the opening stages and leading a race-high 284 laps, but the handling went away as track conditions changed and the upper groove took on more rubber. Polesitter Blaney was fast late in the going despite some pit miscues, but, restarting on the inside, he couldn’t quite get past Gibbs on the two-lap overtime sprint.
On the other hand…
The crash that ended his day before the halfway point wasn’t his fault, but despite downplaying his disappointment in interviews after his 37th-place finish, Alex Bowman struggled hard in his return to the driver’s seat.
Bowman sat out four races with vertigo after giving up his seat mid-race at Circuit of the Americas, and he admitted that at the time, he wondered if the issue would end his career.
Bowman’s contract with Hendrick Motorsports and his future are both uncertain. He’s a good driver, capable of winning races, and he has multiple playoff appearances, but he’s not as consistent as his teammates and has missed races due to injury in three of the last five years. He was also winless in 2025 while his HMS teammates all visited victory lane.
As long as Bowman is fully healed from his bout with vertigo, he can still turn things around and salvage his season. Whether he can make The Chase after missing four weeks is questionable, but a couple of wins is a realistic goal, and one that could help Bowman land a seat in 2027, even if it’s not in the No. 48.
What… is the big question everyone should be asking after the race?
There were a number of stories that popped up on Sunday, but one startling statistic stands out simply because it’s time for one team to be asking the big questions. While Gibbs beat Blaney head-to-head in overtime, how long is Team Penske going to let the No. 12 pit crew cost their driver positions on the track?
At one point mid-race, the broadcast noted that Blaney’s pit crew had cost him a whopping 86 spots on pit road this year, through, at that point, just 7.5 races, 30 more than anyone else.
Ultimately, it didn’t cost Blaney a chance at the win … this week. It probably won’t cost him a Chase berth. But if it keeps happening, it will almost certainly erode some of the trust within the team, and that could very well cost him a championship.
After a torrid start to the season in which he set a record for consecutive wins to open a season with three straight trips to victory lane, Tyler Reddick immediately served notice that he was an early title favorite. But being an early favorite and backing it up all year are two very different things. Five weeks after his win streak, is Reddick showing any signs of cooling off?
So far, he’s still smoking. In the last five races, he has three top 10s, a win, and has not finished worse than 15th. Reddick has struggled at short, flat tracks in the past, but he has worked hard to improve those results, and it has paid off. While he had his season-worst showing last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, it was a 15th-place finish, one of his better runs. His eighth-place run at Phoenix Raceway was hardly a dud, and his fourth-place finish Sunday ties his career-best at Bristol, a baker’s dozen spots ahead of his track average.
He’s going to have a bad finish sooner or later and will need to show he can bounce back, but so far, Reddick is doing everything he can to stay in the conversation for the long haul.
Where… did he come from?
A tire gamble certainly helped Todd Gilliland come from 35th to his best finish and first top 10 of 2026, but while pit strategy gave Gilliland track position, he still had to keep it. And while he didn’t storm through the field to the front, Gilliland was solid on older tires and avoided trouble to stay in the top 10.
That’s a big deal for the No. 34 team, whose previous best finish was 12th at Phoenix a month ago. It’s been a tough start to 2026 for Front Row Motorsports, with Gilliland’s finish on Sunday just the third top 10 for the organization this year. Zane Smith has cooled off since opening the season with back-to-back top 10s, and Noah Gragson’s best finish to date is 11th in the Daytona 500.
While Sunday’s finish isn’t going to turn Gilliland or his teammates into contenders overnight, it does speak to the No. 34 team’s willingness to make calculated risks and try something different to gain ground, and that’s certainly an ingredient for growth as a team.
When… are we going to talk about the points?
One of Reddick’s goals this year is to improve on short tracks, and he got results at Bristol, finishing fourth. Despite his finish, Reddick’s point lead falls from 82 to 62 points over Blaney, who finished just two positions higher but also finished in the top three in both of the opening stages while Reddick failed to score stage points, thanks in part to a pit road speeding penalty. Blaney also grabbed the point for the fastest lap.
Hamlin also gained a handful of points on Reddick and sits third, 86 behind the lead. Gibbs moved up two places thanks to his win, and is now fourth, 105 behind Reddick. Chase Elliott fell to fifth after his late spin.
Larson’s stage wins and third-place finish gained him three spots, and he now sits in sixth. His Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron, struggled at Bristol and fell to seventh. Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell and Chris Buescher round out the top 10 after Bristol.
The biggest gain of the week was Chase Briscoe’s four-position climb from 21st to 17th, while Brad Keselowski’s slide from eighth to 11th was the largest loss.
At the Chase bubble, Shane van Gisbergen holds down 16th, 15 points behind 14th-place Daniel Suarez and just one point ahead of Briscoe in 17th.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
It’s hard to believe the season will be a quarter of the way over after next weekend’s race at Kansas Speedway, but here we are.
Heading to Kansas, it’s just the second “cookie cutter” 1.5-mile track of the year. Hamlin won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, and his four wins at Kansas lead active Cup drivers, just ahead of Larson and Joey Logano.
However, points are the name of the game, and the most consistent driver at Kansas is Elliott, who has two wins and is the only active driver with a top-10 average finish (9.9). Despite not having a win to show for it, Bell has been rock solid as well, posting an 11.1 average finish (second among active drivers) and nine top 10s in 12 starts.
Point leader Reddick also has a Kansas win.
How… did this race stack up?
Larson’s early dominance overshadowed what was actually a pretty entertaining race. It’s been said before, but sometimes one or two teams hit on something and stink up the show, but that isn’t the whole show.
There were a lot of positives to be seen. The race benefitted from the higher horsepower more than any race this year. There were two working grooves. Drivers could (and did) use their bumpers to move another car for position without causing a crash. Short-track frustration showed without getting out of hand.
Was it perfect? Hardly. Thanks to the stage breaks (those really need to go), pit strategy wasn’t really a thing. Natural cautions also contributed, but those are not a choice the way the stage breaks are.
Also, the tire was a disappointment. While tire strategy won the day, tires that fall off markedly and force drivers to make choices to conserve them, create better racing.
Overall, it certainly wasn’t the best Bristol race ever, but it might have been the best with the Next Gen car—and that’s something.
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.
I started watching Nascar in 1987. I never missed Bristol. This year, I couldn’t even get through the 30-minute YouTube highlights reel. Did anyone notice the empty stands? Especially with the Truck race. It’s a damn shame….
Somewhat the same. I attended my first Cup race in 1981. Ever since the repave(s) Bristol hasn’t been at all the same. The stages make it even worse, and have Goodyear trying to balance on the head of a pin to have tire wear, but not so much it causes blowouts in the rare case a long run should happen despite the stage breaks.
It’s gotten bad enough I cancelled my TV package just today. I can afford it, but it’s no longer worth it to me. I can get most Cup races via antenna/streaming, and I’m not going to pay for Fox’s streaming service just to get FS1/FS2. In the past, I would have ensured I had access to all of NASCAR’s top series, come hell or high water. No more.
After massive tire issues the last two years at Bristol, I’m not surprised Goodyear brought a harder tire this year that didn’t wear as much.
i don’t know, it seemed during pre-race coverage they knew gibbs would win.
he’s got his first win, oh well let’s see when no. 2 comes around.