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Kyle Larson Passes Alex Bowman Late To Win At Homestead-Miami Speedway

by Hunter Thomas March 23, 2025 0 comments

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Kyle Larson bested his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Alex Bowman to win Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Bowman was in command in the closing laps, but with seven laps to go, he hit the wall, and Larson, who had a ton of speed, flew by and won his first race of the 2025 season. Larson had been fast all day, but at the end, it was his incredible car control right up against the outside wall that helped him win his second race at the track.

“Yeah, just crazy,” Larson said. “I knew me coming towards those guys, they were going to start moving around and making mistakes. I felt like if I could just keep pressure on Alex, I would hope that he made a mistake. He caught the wall there, and I got by him easier than I expected to.

Still had to work hard, though. My balance once I got in clean air was really loose, just like those guys were. So hats off to the whole team, Hendrickcars.com, Chevrolet, Prime, Valvoline, the whole Hendrick engine shop, everybody involved, Hendrick Automotive Group. A lot of Hendricks.”

Bowman, driver of the No. 48 Ally Unrivaled League Chevrolet has consistently finished inside the top-10 in all races but won so far this season, but Sunday’s runner-up effort marked his first top-five finishes of the year. Bowman was strong all day. He sat on the pole, finished second in Stage 1, and sixth in Stage 2. He even led 43 laps, but one mistake allowed Larson to pass by.

“I guess I choked that one away,” Bowman said. “Just burned my stuff up. Saw the 5 coming, so moved around a little bit. Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit it hard with the right front and ended up just bending something enough that I lost a lot of right front feel and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad. So I hate that for this Ally 48 group. They deserve better than that. Just a couple of mistakes there. I felt like we were okay all day. That last run was the best we were. Hats off to Ally and Blake (Harris, crew chief) and everybody for supporting this 48 team.”

Toyota GAZOO Racing drivers, Bubba Wallace, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-five. Chris Buescher finished sixth, followed by AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Preece and Justin Haley.

Ryan Blaney won Stage 1, and Hamlin won Stage 2.

Blaney led a race high of 124 laps; however, on Lap 209, his Team Penske No. 12 Dent Wizard Ford blew up in a huge cloud of smoke. Blaney finished 36^th.

“I didn’t have any warning,” Blaney said. “It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang.  We led a lot of laps. We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was gonna get back into it. It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting.”

The only other caution for an issue on the track occurred on Lap 71, when Christopher Bell spun coming out of Turn 4. Bell finished 29^th.

Byron leads Larson in the standings by 36 points.

The NASCAR Cup Series will visit Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, March 30 for the Cook Out 500. Live coverage will broadcast on FS1 at 3 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images