By Zach Arnold

BRISTOL, Tenn —- With 462 laps led, Kyle Larson earned another Bristol Motor Speedway win in dominant fashion. Saturday night’s success marked his second Bass Pro Shops Night Race victory. It is no surprise to see the No. 5 team run well at the half-mile; he has finished in the top ten, ten times in his last eleven starts at Bristol.

The No. 5 team had a strong start to the weekend and qualified on the front row in second, setting themselves up for success. It took Larson 32 laps to get to the lead; aside from a few pit stops and restarts, there was no competition for the Hendrick Motorsports team.

Four different drivers led a lap tonight, those being: Larson, Alex Bowman, Tyler Reddick, and Bubba Wallace. It is important to note that Wallace only led one, Reddick had three, and Bowman had 32. There was not much holding back the No. 5 team.

There were five total cautions in the tonight race, two of which were due to the end of a stage. The first wreck happened only six laps into the event with John Hunter Nemechek, the No. 42’s day was hurt from this; they finished in 33rd.

Joey Logano spun out on the frontstretch on lap 244, Bristol has not been nice to the No. 22 car. Logano was locked into the next round of playoffs with his win at Atlanta a couple weeks ago, but last year, he wrecked at Bristol, which eliminated him from playoffs.

The final caution from tonight’s race involved Corey Lajoie and josh Berry. Earlier this weekend, it was announced that this would be Lajoie’s final race in Spire Motorsport’s No.7 Chevrolet; a 36th-place finish was not the note they were hoping to end on.

Brutal penalties on pit road killed championship hopes for two Joe Gibbs Racing drivers, Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs. Things were looking upward for Truex Jr. and the No. 19 team; they were above the cutoff line until the penalty. Truex Jr. finishes his final full-time season as a first-round exit.

With these penalties, it helped Daniel Suarez and Chase Briscoe advance to the next round. This saved Suarez’s playoff hopes, as he entered the race with a solid buffer on the cutoff line, and threw all those points away during the race. He finished in 31st four laps down.

With the help of his teammates’ mistakes on pit road, Denny Hamlin was able to find a spot in the round of 12 with a fourth-place finish. Hamlin entered the race at the very rock bottom of the playoff grid, but performed strong enough to keep his championship hopes alive.

The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Kansas Speedway to open up the next round of the 2024 Playoffs. Catch the race on the USA Network at 3:00 pm on Sunday.