The 2025 Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway was a race to forget for Kyle Larson, who wrecked twice in the same location on two different instances (early and late) and left the track deemed “Too Tough to Tame” towards the bottom of the final leaderboard.
The 2021 Cup Series champion from Elk Grove, California, commenced NASCAR’s annual Throwback Weekend event at Darlington by sporting a special orange, blue, white and yellow scheme to his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet entry that paid homage to NASCAR Hall of Famer and former champion Terry Labonte when the latter achieved his final Cup victory at Darlington in 2003. By then, it marked a second consecutive time where Larson paid tribute to Labonte at Darlington after he sported a throwback white, yellow, red and green-schemed entry that mirrored Labonte’s 1996 Cup championship entry during the 2024 campaign.
Starting in 19th place for the 2025 event at Darlington, Larson spent the opening laps racing within the top-20 mark. Then on the third lap, Larson, who was battling Joey Logano for 18th place, snapped sideways entering the backstretch, spun and hit the inside wall head-on. The incident was enough to have Larson’s entry towed back to the garage, but under NASCAR’s revised Damaged Vehicle Policy (DVP), the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet pit crew was permitted to have Larson’s entry repaired to return to the track.
Within the latter half of the second stage period, Larson returned and maintained a minimum speed to continue to race. By then, he was 160 laps down and strapped at the rear of the field in 38th place. Over the course of the event, Larson would overtake J.J. Yeley to move up to 37th place.
Then, with four laps remaining, Larson was involved in a second on-track incident entering the backstretch. The incident occurred as Larson, who briefly stepped out of the gas to avoid making contact with Tyler Reddick as Reddick bounced off the backstretch’s outside wall while battling Ryan Blaney for the lead, was hit in the rear end by Reddick’s 23XI Racing teammate, Bubba Wallace. The contact from Wallace sent Larson’s No. 5 entry sliding sideways to the bottom of the track and hitting the inside wall head-on. Compared to his first head-on incident early in the event, Larson sustained more front-nose damage to his entry and he ended up retiring his car in the garage.
With a 37th-place finish in the final running order of the Goodyear 400, Larson was left strapped with his second result of finishing outside the top-30 mark and his first DNF of the 2025 Cup Series campaign. In addition, the Californian recorded his fourth consecutive finish of 20th or worse in the spring Darlington event.
Nonetheless, Larson is currently ranked in sixth place in the driver’s standings and trailing the lead by 71 points. In addition, he accumulated his first Cup victory of the 2025 season at Homestead-Miami Speedway in late March and is in a guaranteed spot of locking up a berth to make the 2025 Playoffs come this September and NASCAR’s return to Darlington.
With the Cup Series’ first of two scheduled visits of the year to Darlington in the rearview mirror, Larson, along with his fellow competitors, will next travel to Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, for the Food City 500. Having recorded 12 top-10 results through 17 previous Cup starts at Bristol, Larson is a two-time race winner at the venue, both of which occurred in the fall and during the Playoffs. Finishing as high as second place during the spring Bristol event, he will contend for his first spring victory this upcoming weekend.
The 2025 Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway is scheduled to occur next Sunday, April 13, and air at 3 p.m. ET on FS1.
