Ty's Turn
Food City 500: Ty Gibbs scored the victory in Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway - his first career NASCAR Cup Series win. Gibbs and crew had a late-race pit strategy that left him out on older tires as the laps dwindled. However, Gibbs was able to hold off late charges by Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson to score his first career win. The win continues strong runs by the Gibbs and the 54 team at the start of the 2026 campaign and propelled him to fourth in the Cup Series point standings.
The race was decent. It was not the barn-burner, tire-fall-off insanity we had at the Bristol Spring race recently, but it was not a complete snoozefest, as others have been. It was, simply put, an okay Bristol race. A handful of cautions throughout the race kept the race from getting totally boring, with Blaney and Larson dominating the day. It also kept some tension in the race with the potential for payback for a few drivers for their actions. Stenhouse dumped Keselowski, and Herbest spun Kyle Busch. Obviously, the drivers in the negative end were not thrilled with their counterparts, and at Bristol, it is an ideal situation for payback if the opportunity presents itself. The other cautions were a product of good old-fashioned short track racing, the World's Fastest Half Mile. After the caution for Connor Zilisch, the race had all the makings of ending how it had basically started: a heavyweight bout between Larson and Blaney. And as the race was approaching the checkered flag, it had all the signs that Blaney had bested Larson and was on his way to his second win of the 2026 campaign. Yet, the spinning Chase Elliott with a smidge of 20 laps remaining had other plans. That caution allowed teams to throw their best strategy call out there and pray that it would stick. Once the race went back to green flag racing and the field was jumbled up, it truly was a coin flip of whether Blaney and Larson could catch Gibbs, who had commandeered the lead with the laps clicking off. But then there was payback: Kyle Busch dumped Riley Herbst. Now we had a true mad dash to the checkered flag, and it was executed flawlessly by Ty Gibbs, who was able to fend off Blaney as Blaney threw every tool in the tool belt he had to snag the win from Gibbs.
Next up, we head to Kansas Speedway with the NASCAR Cup Series and O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, as the Craftsman Truck Series enjoys a few weekends away from the track. The O'Reilly Series gets the weekend started on Saturday at 7 p.m. EST on The CW with the Kansas Lottery 300. The Cup Series will finish off the weekend with the Advent Health 400 on FOX at 2 p.m. EST on Sunday.
Kansas Picks: Trucks = OFF
NOAPS = William Byron
Cup = Denny Hamlin
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