By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Just Kyle Larson doing Kyle Larson things.
It was just utter dominance for the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway as he led an astounding 462 of 500 laps en route to his fifth win of the 2024 season and second overall on the high-banked half-mile.
Larson rolled off from second-place to start the night behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman, but on lap 33, he vaulted to the lead and the rest is history.
He would ultimately finish 7.088 seconds ahead of another Hendrick teammate in Chase Elliott, with Bubba Wallace finishing the best of the non-Playoff drivers in third.
“Man, that was just great execution all weekend by the team,” Larson said. “Practiced good. You’ve got to qualify good; we did that. Yeah, just had a great car. Thanks to the whole 5 team. They’re the best in the business.
“We dominate a lot of races but we might not close them all out, so it feels really good to close one out here in this Hendrickcars.com Chevy. We’ve got Rick Hendrick here today, too. He hasn’t been to many races this year. And Darrell Jackson, he’s our hype man, he’s here, as well.
“Just a phenomenal car, could kind of manage my stuff and then really pass some cars there at the end.
Denny Hamlin was able to overcome his Playoff points deficit entering the night with a fourth-place finish to move on to the next round of the Playoffs and keep his hopes of challenging for his elusive first championship alive.
“My aspirations were to win it – but it looked like the 5 (Kyle Larson) there was better than all of us,” said Hamlin. “Solid car. I thought we were really good towards the middle of the stages, and then at the end, got too loose and couldn’t hang onto what we had.
“Overall, top-five day, good stage points – kind of in the mix, just not really as good as we’ve been here the last few times, but overall I want to thank this whole FedEx Toyota team for giving me something I can move on with.”
Christopher Bell rounded out the top-five finishers, having clinched his spot in the Playoffs earlier in the race.
The remainder of the top-10 went to Ryan Blaney, Ryan Preece, Chase Briscoe, Bowman, and Ross Chastain.
Further down the running order were the other Playoff drivers, with Austin Cindric finishing 13th, Ty Gibbs finishing 15th, William Byron finishing 17th, Tyler…
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