CONCORD, N.C. – Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race saw Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott extend their streaks of consecutive top-10 finishes at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Larson's fifth-place finish in the No. 5 HendrickCars.com saw the driver overcome a pit road infraction for equipment interference that sent him to the tail of the field to restart 28th on lap 380. The 2021 Cup Series champion drove up to 16th before his tires fell off. Crew chief Cliff Daniels decided to be one of the first to bring his driver to pit road for a green-flag stop as Larson pitted on lap 434. When the cycle of stops was complete, Larson was in the top five. He briefly ran fourth before being passed by Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman in the closing laps.
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Tire management was a huge aspect of the 500-lap race. Based on loop data from the event, Larson proved to be one of the best at it throughout the race. The 31-year-old driver was the fastest late in a run—coincidentally, all of the top-five drivers ranked in the top seven in this statistic.
"I was in a rhythm when I could run around fourth to sixth and kind of pace myself," Larson said. "I felt like I was doing a good job of managing my stuff. We just never got a long run and then the one time we got a long run is when we had the penalty.
"I will take the fifth and be happy with it."
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In four starts at the concrete layout of Bristol with Hendrick Motorsports, Larson has never finished outside the top five. In those races, he has one win (fall 2021), a runner-up finish and 248 laps led. Over that same stretch at the 0.533-mile track, he leads the series in top-five finishes (four), average finish (3.33) and points (189). Larson's four consecutive top-five finishes is the longest active streak at Bristol and his four straight top-10 finishes are tied with race winner Denny Hamlin for the longest active streak at this track.
Larson also moved into a tie atop the points standings with Martin Truex Jr.
Elliott's eighth-place finish at "The Last Great Colosseum" marked his first top-10 result of the season. The 28-year-old driver rallied for that result after tire falloff had impacted the right rear so much that he fell to 30th on lap 311. After taking the race's final restart on lap 380 from 24th, the 2020 Cup Series champion found a rhythm that he hadn't in earlier runs. Elliott drove up to fifth before pitting from that spot on lap 447. Crew chief Alan Gustafson had his driver run a little longer than most and following the cycle of green-flag stops, he cycled out to 11th. However, since Elliott had fresher tires than others in the top 10, he was able to make some late passes to get to his final running spot of eighth.
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"It was like racing at a really old, worn-out short-track," Elliott said. "It was a lot of fun. There was probably a little better balance somewhere up there, but I had a good time."
The result marked Elliott's third straight top-10 finish at Bristol, tied with two others for the third-longest such streak. In fact, he has finished no lower than eighth in the last three races on Bristol's concrete layout. Elliott has also finished in the top 10 at seven of the last nine races on short tracks. After Sunday's race, the driver of the No. 9 sits sixth in the points standings, up three spots from where he was after the Phoenix Raceway event.