BRISTOL, Tenn. — How uncommon wouldn’t it be for 2 completely different Joe Gibbs Racing drivers to vogue three-race successful streaks within the first 9 occasions of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Sequence season?
It might occur.
Denny Hamlin, contemporary from consecutive victories at Martinsville Speedway and Darlington Raceway, goes for a 3rd straight win in Sunday’s Meals Metropolis 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
With a victory, Hamlin would match the feat achieved by teammate Christopher Bell within the second, third and fourth races of the season, at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Circuit of The Americas and Phoenix Raceway.
Final season, the spring race on the 0.533-mile brief monitor returned to the concrete floor after three years on grime. Hamlin received for the third time within the final eight races at Bristol and fourth time total, second solely to Kyle Busch (eight wins) amongst full-time lively drivers.
The speed of tire fall-off in final 12 months’s occasion took all of the rivals unexpectedly and performed into the fingers of Hamlin, an acknowledged grasp of tire administration.
Nevertheless, the driving force of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota believes Sunday’s race is extra more likely to mirror final fall’s Bristol Night time Race, received by Kyle Larson.
“I feel that was simply form of an anomaly,” Hamlin mentioned of final 12 months’s Meals Metropolis 500. “We thought it was temperature, we thought it was all types of various issues, however honestly, there’s one thing that was completely different.
“Don’t know actually what it was, however I might anticipate that we’d have the conventional Bristol (this 12 months), the place your tires don’t put on that a lot, if it’s the identical tire. Temperatures look to be up, so I might say that we’d have form of the conventional Bristol that we’ve had more often than not.”
Hamlin can have a formidable challenger in Larson, who’s going for a triple of his personal. Larson is competing in Friday’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Sequence race, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Sequence occasion and Sunday’s Cup race, hoping to brush the weekend, a feat achieved by Busch twice at Bristol, in 2010 and 2017.
No different driver has ever received all three nationwide sequence races on the similar monitor on the identical weekend, although Larson got here shut three weeks in the past at Homestead-Miami Speedway, successful the Truck and Cup races however shedding the Xfinity race on a late restart.
Little question Busch will likely be paying shut consideration to Larson’s effort, as he was at Homestead.
“He simply tried it at Homestead an got here awfully shut,” Busch mentioned. “Barring a restart late within the going, he had it. That’s what occurs with the triples, man. There are such a lot of variables that may come down as to if you get it or not.
“If any individual can beat Larson off of pit street on the ultimate run of the Cup race and he can’t move them, that’s what occurs in that one. However I’m certain he’ll go and do nicely, and so be it.”
The underside lane of the monitor will likely be sprayed with PJ1 Trackbite for all three races this weekend, a departure from the resin used final spring.
“I feel that’s been probably the most constant factor that we’ve finished,” mentioned Chris Buescher, who received the Night time Race in 2022. “Nearly all of time it’s been three or 4 ft of PJ1 on the underside.”
Apparently, Buescher is the one Bristol winner within the final eight races to win from a beginning place exterior the highest 5. The Roush Fenway Keselowski driver received from twentieth on the grid.
“We’ve been actually good at Bristol,” Buescher mentioned. “We’ve had good tempo. Our crew, (crew chief) Scott Graves and our entire group have made nice technique calls to search out some monitor place and be capable of make some large good points in that sense.
“We’ve had race vehicles which have run the underside rather well when (different vehicles) have gotten strung out on the highest, and we’ve been capable of move plenty of vehicles that means.”
Buescher is the exception that proves the rule, but when qualifying place stays a decisive issue, that argues for Hamlin, too. He leads all lively drivers with 4 pole positions at Thunder Valley.
Busch has two poles to his credit score. No different full-time lively driver has a couple of.
