Kyle Petty: No one but Kyle Larson had a chance to win Bristol Night Race
Kyle Larson absolutely dominated the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway over the weekend, and Kyle Petty believes there wasn’t anyone who could’ve challenged him on the track in Tennessee.
It was a memorable performance from Larson, as he stepped on the throat of his competitors for basically the entire race, setting a Hendrick Motorsports record for most laps led in a single race. Following the win, Petty explained how Larson was able to dominate, and he took a look at where the No. 5 team goes from here.
“The other story that came out of Bristol for me, ‘New Money’ made it happen at Bristol,” Petty stated. “I’ve seen some dominating performances, but this was a dominating performance. We don’t see them as much as we used to, but he took control of this race from the very beginning. So many times we’ll watch a race and we’ll go back through it and we’ll say, ‘Well, you know what? The cautions have fallen here, or if this had happened, this guy had a shot at winning the race, or this guy had a shot at winning the race.’ Once they threw the green flag, everybody else could have gone to the garage area. No one had a shot at winning this race but Kyle Larson. It was flawless.
“What he did on the racetrack, the pit crew on pit road — they never lost the lead. They never lost the lead in the race once they took it. I want you to think about that. Yeah, they didn’t lead all the laps because of pit cycles and the stage breaks and everything, but they never lost the lead. That is fascinating to me in this day and time. The No. 5 car and Kyle Larson continues to impress, and continues to dominate in ways that we’ve never seen before. Look for him in Phoenix.”
The numbers certainly backup Petty’s assertion — Larson recorded a 7.1-second margin of victory on Saturday in what will go down as the third most dominant Bristol win of all-time. With only four leaders, the 2024 Bass Pro Shops Night Race joined the 2023 Bristol Dirt and 2022 spring Martinsville as races with the fewest number of cars pacing the field in the Next Gen car era.
There were just eight lead changes throughout the race. Denny Hamlin took the checkered flag by just one second in March in a race featuring 54 lead changes.
The tires not wearing as much as they did in the spring contributed to Larson’s domination, as drivers were posting similar lap times, making it hard to pass. Everybody but Larson, that is, who clearly had the car to beat all night.
Still, while it was an incredible performance, Larson wiping the field with ease wasn’t what the fans wanted to see. Just 27.2%. of fans said they enjoyed Saturday’s race in Jeff Gluck of The Athletic‘s good race poll.
That’s certainly not on the forefront of Kyle Larson’s mind though. He’s aiming for his second NASCAR Cup Series title, and it’s pretty clear, taking Bristol and the entire 2024 campaign into consideration, that he’s the driver to beat moving forward.