Folks, the Homestead Miami weekend is wrapped up and like always, the track did not disappoint. What a day it was for Hendrick Motorsports. Alex Bowman took the pole to start the race, and we bet you didn’t have the #48 as the front-runner here. He’s never even gotten a top 5 at Homestead, let alone a win. But that’s just Homestead and Bowman did a fine job staying up top. He took P2 in stage one behind Ryan Blaney and then P6 in stage 2. Eventually, by the end of it, he was back in the lead and he just had to hold it for 7 laps to get his first win of the season. However, that’s easier said than done when you have got the master of riding the fence in your rear-view mirror.
For those of you who don’t know, Homestead Miami is a top-heavy race track. This basically means that drivers have to run close to the wall to get maximum speed. And the closer one can get, the faster he is. However, this comes with the risk of scrapping it and damaging your car. And that’s exactly what happened with Alex Bowman. In the end, he could not keep it together, losing the lead in Lap 261. But Rick Hendrick is not complaining. It was still a photo finish for his team as HMS dominated Homestead weekend.
Alex Bowman yields to Kyle Larson’s Homestead superiority
The #5 driver started the race in P14, but that did not faze him one bit. With the kind of tire wear Homestead has, track position on qualifying hardly matters, and Kyle Larson eventually was going to climb up. The entire weekend we saw how good he’s been. One bad restart is all that separated Larson and a weekend sweep! First, he won the Truck Series race, beating Corey Heim after spinning out in the final stage of the race. The only reason he was able to quickly make up the loss in track position was due to his ability to ride just inches away from the wall. And no one can do that better than him. Then he almost won the Xfinity race too. With two laps to go, he was leading on the restart and had Sam Mayer not gotten in the rear of him, we’d see Larson win that as well.
And now at the Cup race, Alex Bowman had to block that top lane to keep Larson at bay. But he could not do it without getting in the wall. On Lap 267, Bowman bumped into the wall on Turns 3 and 4 and lost a ton of momentum while Larson zoomed past him to take the lead. There just wasn’t anything the #48 driver could do. Kyle Larson is that good. Finally, Bowman finished in P2, and he was awestruck looking ahead, taking notes, as Larson rode that wall with near perfection. Alex Bowman took it to X, to share his thoughts. He wrote, “Dangit. Pressure from the baddest dude on earth and I made a mistake and gave it to him. Congrats @KyleLarsonRacinWe’ll re rack and go after it again next week.”
Dangit. Pressure from the baddest dude on earth and I made a mistake and gave it to him. Congrats @KyleLarsonRacin
We’ll re rack and go after it again next week
— Alex Bowman (@Alex_Bowman) March 23, 2025
Alex Bowman was intimidated, with Larson chasing him down. And he admitted that post the race. He said, “I guess I choked that one away, for sure. Just kind of burned my stuff up. Saw (Larson) coming, so I moved around a little bit. Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit (the wall) with the right front and just bent 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, man, I hate that for this group.”
But still, with this performance, it feels like HMS is finally on track to have a dominant year. To “Thrive in 25.” If you recall…Rick Hendrick has set this as the goal for his team this season. And it’s only now in the sixth race, that we are seeing it. Yes, Chase Elliott started the season on a high note for them, winning the Bowman Gray race. But that’s not a point race, so it doesn’t count. And Elliott has struggled ever since. He finished Homestead in P18. So far in the points race, he’s only got one top 5 (COTA). The #24 William Byron did win a wreck-filled Daytona 500 after starting ninth on the final lap. So technically, this feels like the first well-deserved points race win for HMS. And with it, Larson’s finally conquered Homestead Miami for the second time in his Cup career after recent disappointments.
Kyle Larson’s back with Homestead Miami form
This is Larson’s first win of the season and his 30th in the Cup Series. With this he is now the third-winningest driver of Hendrick Motorsports after Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. And not just that, he is also now extending his lead as the winningest driver in the next-gen car with 14 wins. But surely none of this comes close to his happiness of finally winning at Homestead. He started off as the first Homestead winner in the Gen 7. And it felt like he would remain unbeatable on the track. But after that 2022 win, Homestead hasn’t been kind to him.
In 2023, he started the race in P5, won stage one, got a P3 in stage 2, and was eventually looking to win. But the race for him came to an end in the most dramatic fashion. Entering the pit lane, he got loose and hit the barrier, ending his race. And then in 2024, he was desperate for a win to make the Championship 4. He started P2 and had a good run. And with 13 to go, he almost caught the race leader Ryan Blaney. But he went in too hard and spun out, eventually finishing 13th. Naturally, he was disappointed. “I had a little bit of a hole and I was trying to shoot the gap to get in front of the No. 3 and get to the wall quickly to either hopefully stay on the outside of the No. 12 or build a run to have a shot at him in (turns) one and two. But yeah, it just didn’t work out.”
And now, he’s finally won it and the #5 driver feels satisfied. “Just had to keep plugging away at what I know and what’s good for me. Proud of myself. Proud of the team. Just a lot of gritty, hard work today between damage on pit road, qualifying bad, bad restarts. All that stuff. Just super pumped. One of the coolest wins of my Cup career because of all the heartbreak I’ve had here. The heartbreak yesterday. Just keep my head down and keep digging feels really good.”
Folks, what did you think of Kyle Larson’s Homestead Miami win? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
The post Rick Hendricks “Baddest Dude on Earth” Out Maneuvered Alex Bowman Leaving the 31-YO Grasping at Straws appeared first on EssentiallySports.
