1. Kyle Larson Is Still Missing His Mojo
This coming weekend will mark NASCAR’s annual spring fling to Kansas Speedway, a dubious omen for the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion.
Kyle Larson has not won a Cup race since his win in this same spring Kansas race last year.
He began 2025 with three wins in the first 12 races. After that was a very uninspired second attempt at the Indianapolis 500. Instead of winning at least one of the races on Memorial Day Sunday, Larson wrecked out of both.
He’s never really been the same since. Yes, he won the Cup championship and he scored the most points that season.
But not only did he not win another race in the year, he only led 255 laps in the remaining 23 races of the season despite having a total laps-led mark of 1,106 on the year. He also won the championship in a very uninteresting fashion that really put an exclamation mark on how bad the old playoff system was.
He’s since improved this season, but the vast majority of his 421 laps led this year were done in the first two-thirds of Sunday’s (April 12) race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
When the pay window has opened, both on Sunday and in general, Ryan Blaney has been clearly the fastest driver in the series. It’s not his fault that he’s been given the equivalent of Kevin Harvick’s old SHR pit crew.
As far as Larson goes, a lot of this gets negated if he can get that long-awaited win. Speaking of which …
2. Ty Gibbs, Cup Series Champion?
After a euphoric win in the Cup Series race at Bristol, there might be some serious consideration into Ty Gibbs’ status as a potential title contender.
Throw out the first two races of the season held on superspeedways. In the six races since, Gibbs has an average finish of fourth. This is a full two positions ahead of Blaney in second.
He’s also the only Cup driver with a top-10 finish in those six races and leads the field in top-five finishes.
That’s not to say Gibbs has been pitch perfect. He ranks ninth in laps led with a paltry 43. He’s also only second in points scored in that time frame, scoring four points fewer than Denny Hamlin. The reason for the difference is fewer stage points, something he’ll have to work on as the year goes on.
What’s more is that the average finish wasn’t ever a true championship clincher in the Chase era. Taking a glance at the Cup Series from 2004 to 2013, the leader in average finish still lost the championship six times out of 10.
3. The Next First-Time Winner
With Gibbs having finally won a Cup race, the next question to ask is, who will be the next first-time winner?
With how rare it is for a part-time driver to actually win a race, let’s look at the current drivers in the series. There are currently 10 full-time drivers with no race wins. Here they are ranked by career starts, with ties broken by the driver with the oldest debut.
| Ranking | Driver | Career Starts |
| 1. | Ty Dillon | 289 |
| 2. | Ryan Preece | 231 |
| 3. | Todd Gilliland | 152 |
| 4. | Cody Ware | 150 |
| 5. | John Hunter Nemechek | 121 |
| 6. | Noah Gragson | 119 |
| 7. | Zane Smith | 89 |
| 8. | Carson Hovevar | 89 |
| 9. | Riley Herbst | 52 |
| 10. | Connor Zilisch | 11 |
Of these 10 drivers, the three that jump out are Hocevar, Zilisch and Preece.
Hocevar has absolutely had the pace to win a race. But a combination of bad luck and bad racecraft has kept him from finishing a lot of these races.
Zilisch should be a contender in the upcoming road course races on the calendar.
Near the end of the regular season this year are races at Iowa Speedway, Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. All three of these tracks should play well with Preece’s background as a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour driver. Richmond and Loudon are also known for having more unusual race winners from time to time. Think Austin Dillon and Aric Almirola.
With that being said, all of these drivers have a fair shot at winning a race on a superspeedway. Even Ware has led some laps at Daytona International Speedway in the recent past.
4. Goodyear’s Struggles
It needs to be stressed that Goodyear really did not bring a great tire this week.
After extensive testing in November, Goodyear developed new tires to debut this specific weekend. While there were no blowouts, there was also very little falloff.
Gibbs held off both Larson and Blaney on much older tires. They were only losing about a second per lap every 50 laps. Throughout the day, there were drivers like Josh Berry who used pit strategy to restart up near the front and stay there for quite a bit of the race.
The good thing with the Goodyear of today is that I have faith in it to work more on this tire. It’s nothing like the Goodyear of a few years ago, where it’d just bring bricks every week.
5. Kyle Busch, NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2029?
Kyle Busch may have reached a new career low this week.
Riley Herbst sent Busch for a spin midway through the race. Busch seemed to respond by spinning Herbst out with four laps to go to set up the final restart.
Herbst then finished ahead of Busch in the race. Wait, what?
Richard Childress Racing has still been unable to score a top 10 finish this year, and if Busch and Austin Dillon can’t get one at Talladega Superspeedway in a couple of weeks, it might take a while.
It really speaks volumes about just how great Tyler Reddick is. Reddick getting RCR multiple quality wins and showing consistent speed when he was there was a bit remarkable. Nobody else on this team has done that since Harvick left over a decade ago.
Michael has watched NASCAR for over 25 years and has covered it on-and-off for 14.
In addition to Frontstretch he also writes sporadically for his own websites GrandPrixFocus.com and StockCarFocus.com.
Next new winner? My money is on Hosevar and Preece.
agree!
ty gibbs championship? one race does not a championship season make. highly unlikely.
is kyle larson racing as much mid-week as he used to do…maybe that’s why he seems off. i know his daughter has been racing.
Yeah, both of these seemed a little odd to me as well. Could Ty win a championship? Sure, so could 20 other drivers, as the title is currently constructed. I’d put Gibbs as either 3rd most likely, or least likely among the JGR drivers, but it’s possible. Decent runs with no DNFs in the final ten races could easily net a title, if misfortune hits other competitors. Just have to make the chase.
Larson and Blaney were the class of the field Sunday, with Larson even having the edge between those two. But for pit strategy, Larson likely would have won this week, and this observation about Larson probably wouldn’t have been written.