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William Byron, Ryan Blaney rip Kyle Busch, lapped traffic at Homestead-Miami

FaceProfileby:Thomas Goldkamp•03/23/25
Ryan Blaney (4)
Jason Allen-Imagn Images

It had been a quiet day for Kyle Busch on the track in the NASCAR Cup Series event at Homestead. He had barely shown up on the broadcast of the Straight Talk Wireless 400 until late in Stage 2.

And when he popped up on screen, it wasn’t for a good reason. He was in the way.

Busch and Shane Van Gisbergen had already been lapped and were simply trying to make up track positioning when they caught up William Byron in the chop. Byron was pushing Ryan Blaney for the lead at the time.

Byron’s team expressed frustration on his NASCAR team radio. It was a distinct call-out.

“They’re racing for f*cking last,” someone said. Someone else quickly added, “Two Chevrolets!”

But while Byron was pushing Blaney for the lead, Blaney was having his own problems with lapped racers. He couldn’t get by Todd Gilliland and Riley Herbst, despite a radio request for an easy pass.

“I’m gonna lose the stage because of these f*cking d*ckheads,” Blaney said.

In any case, it had been an extremely strong start to the NASCAR Cup Series race for Blaney. He won the first stage with relative ease and earned points in the second stage, despite not winning it.

Stage 1 Summary

Ryan Blaney took the Stage 1 win after a relatively smooth run in the opening stage of the NASCAR Cup Series race. He didn’t have a ton of competition, though Alex Bowman gave it a push after starting on the pole.

In the end, Bowman just couldn’t quite make up enough ground to take the stage win. The rest of the finish in the first stage, earning stage points, looked like this:

NASCAR Cup Series – Stage 1 Finish

  1. Ryan Blaney
  2. Alex Bowman
  3. Chase Briscoe
  4. Kyle Larson
  5. Austin Cindric
  6. William Byron
  7. AJ Allmendinger
  8. Josh Berry
  9. Noah Gragson
  10. Joey Logano