HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Larson passed Alex Bowman with six laps remaining in NASCAR’s Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday, giving the Hendrick Motorsports driver the 30th win of his career at one of his best tracks.
Larson sped by as Bowman scraped the wall on Turn 4 with the lead. Larson extended his edge to more than a second over his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, then held on to beat Bowman by 1.205 seconds for his second career Cup Series win at Homestead, and his second victory of the weekend.
Larson fell one race short of sweeping the triple-header weekend. He won the Craftsman Truck race on Friday and finished fourth in the Xfinity Series on Saturday. He was hoping to join Kyle Busch as the only drivers to sweep a triple-header weekend — Busch did it at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2010 and 2017.
He was far from dominant on Sunday. Larson, driving the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, led just 19 of 267 laps and had to overcome poor starting position, pit road mishaps and bad restarts to pull off the win — his first victory of the season and first in the Cup Series at Homestead since 2022.
Bowman, who was Saturday’s pole winner, finished second in the No. 48 Chevrolet. Bubba Wallace was third for 23XI Racing after leading 43 laps — the most laps he’s led in a race since September 2023. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five.
Ryan Blaney was running third when his engine blew up on Lap 207, causing a thick cloud of smoke to cover the track and a lengthy cleanup.
It had been a strong race for Blaney before then. He led 124 laps and won Stage 1 after starting sixth. It was the second time in three races that Blaney did not finish a race because of an engine failure with his No. 12 Team Penske Ford.
“It just stinks,” Blaney said. “Led a lot of laps. Lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road but got back to third. And it was a great race between me, Bubba and Larson. … It was going to be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll keep our head up.
“It’s one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars.”
