Larson looks to Bristol bullring to break out of Cup Series drought

Will the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion enter and sign in, please?

To be fair, Kyle Larson hasn’t exactly been a no-show this season. The driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet has one top five, four top 10s and 137 laps led through seven races. He’s tied with Brad Keselowski for eighth in the series standings, 147 points behind runaway leader Tyler Reddick.

However, this is the first year since he joined Hendrick Motorsports in 2021 that Larson is winless through the first seven races. He has more wins (one) and more laps led (154) in two starts in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.

Fortunately for Larson, the next stop on the Cup Series tour happens to come at one of his best and favorite racetracks, Bristol Motor Speedway, which will host Sunday’s Food City 500 (3pm ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Larson is the defending winner of the race. He has taken the checkered flag in two of the last three events at Bristol and three of the last seven. His 1,762 laps led at the 0.533-mile track (including 462 of 500 in the 2024 night race) are ninth all-time in just 19 starts.

“Bristol’s tough, at least in the Next Gen era, because you really don’t know what you’re going to get in track and race conditions until you get into the race,” said Larson, who hopes to break a winless streak of 31 races, third longest of his career.

“I feel like every practice we’ve had there, maybe with the exception of one or two, is really high tire wear, and you’re like scratching your head, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s the track going to do? Do we change our car a bunch overnight to accommodate that wear?'

“And then you get into the race, and conditions are normal. And then you come back the next time, and you’re like, ‘The race is going to be normal. It’s going to be no tire wear. It’s going to get back to normal,’ and then the race is high tire wear, and you’re changing your race strategy.”

To deal with the unpredictability, Goodyear is introducing new right- and left-side tires designed to counteract the potential temperature swings at the track. With 10 new sets and one set of qualifying scuffs available for the race, however, teams still may have to be judicious with tire use.

Tire wear, or lack of it, is always a guessing game at Bristol. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Another variable is the new short-track competition package that features more than a 10-percent increase in horsepower from 670 to 750, shorter three-inch spoiler and a simplified diffuser with fewer strakes, resulting in lower downforce.

Larson’s dirt-track background and adaptability to different race cars and setups should give him an advantage, but the same can be said of Denny Hamlin, who learned the nuances of tire management in late model racing on asphalt. Hamlin went back-to-back at Thunder Valley in the 2023 night race and 2024 spring race.

Nor would it be wise to ignore Hamlin’s teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing. Christopher Bell won at Bristol most recently (last year’s night race) and is the only driver to finish in the top 10 in all six races with the Next Gen car at the high-banked concrete track.

Ty Gibbs arrives at Bristol with a streak of five straight finishes of sixth or better this season. Gibbs has led more than 100 laps in three of his last five appearances at Thunder Valley (with a high of 201 last fall) and has finished in the top 10 in four of the last five.