04/12/26 05:29:00
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04/12 17:27 CDT Ty Gibbs earns first NASCAR Cup victory at Bristol, beating
Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney
Ty Gibbs earns first NASCAR Cup victory at Bristol, beating Kyle Larson and
Ryan Blaney
BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) --- Ty Gibbs outdueled Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson in
overtime Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, breaking through for his first
NASCAR Cup Series victory in his 131st start.
Gibbs, the grandson of NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner and former Super
Bowl-winning coach Joe Gibbs, led the final 25 laps and held off the two NASCAR
Cup Series champions, who both had tires that were nearly 100 laps fresher, on
a furious final restart.
Blaney, who started from the pole position, finished second.
Larson, who led a race-high 284 of 500 laps and won the first two stages on the
0.533-mile oval, finished third and remained winless in the past 32 races.
Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top five.
Gibbs became the sixth NASCAR driver to earn his first Cup victory at Bristol,
joining Dale Earnhardt (1979), Rusty Wallace (1986), Ernie Irvan (1990),
Elliott Sadler (2001) and Kurt Busch (2002).
Hendrick woes
While Larson excelled at the front, two of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates
were struggling mightily.
William Byron started from the rear because of unapproved adjustments to his
No. 24 Chevrolet, which had steering problems in practice and qualifying
Saturday. Byron, who has led at every active track but Bristol, was off the
pace from the start and finished five laps down.
Returning frommissing four races because of vertigo, Alex Bowman started 27th
and finished last after being involved in a multicar crash started by Shane van
Gisbergen.
"I was fine, just a frustrating day," Bowman said. "Thought we were OK in
practice and then obviously qualified bad and then just really struggled with
the handling today. Bummer. Hate that we didn't get a chance to work on it and
make it better and finish the race, but it's kind of outside our control. When
you run that bad, stuff can happen, and it happened to us."
Up next
The NASCAR Cup Series will race April 19 at Kansas Speedway, the first of three
consecutive tracks 1.5 miles and longer. Hendrick Motorsports has won three of
the past four races at Kansas with Kyle Larsonand Chase Elliott winning last
year at the oval in Kansas City, Kansas.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
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