Kyle Larson has not won a NASCAR Cup Series race since Kansas in May 2025. The streak now stands at 37 races — his longest since joining Hendrick Motorsports at the start of 2021. On Sunday night, he returns to Nashville Superspeedway for the Cracker Barrel 400, where his 5.2 average finish across five Cup starts is the best mark he has at any active track on the schedule.
Larson is the defending Cup champion. His teammates have won six races in the same span — four for Chase Elliott, two for William Byron. Spire Motorsports has won two races this season, matching Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing through 13 events; one of those Spire wins was last week's Coca-Cola 600, which Daniel Suárez won in the No. 9.
The form is there. Larson has led 513 laps this season, second only to Denny Hamlin. He has run 47.05 percent of laps in the top five — second to Hamlin again — and 65.05 percent of laps in the top ten, third in the series. He has finished runner-up four times since the streak began, including this year at Kansas. The car is fast. The wins are not arriving.
The Nashville record is its own story. Larson won the inaugural Nashville Cup race in 2021. In the five Cup races run there since the series returned, he has finished first, fourth, fifth, eighth, and eighth. He is the only driver to have finished top-10 in all five. His Nashville average is the best mark he has at any active track. Next is Chicago at 6.2; then Dover at 7.9.
Worth noting: Nashville has produced first-win-of-the-season winners in each of the last three Cup races run there. Ross Chastain in 2023. Joey Logano in 2024. Ryan Blaney in 2025. Each was collecting his first win of that year on the Nashville concrete. The pattern is not a guarantee. It is also not nothing.
The points lead belongs to Tyler Reddick, whose 5.54 average finish through 13 races is the seventh-best start to a season in the modern era. He is one of only five drivers ever to finish on the lead lap in every one of the first 13 races of a season — joining Matt Kenseth (2007), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (2012), Kurt Busch (2016), and Denny Hamlin (2023).
Denny Hamlin has led 344 laps at Nashville — more than any other driver. His 3.8 average running position there in the Next Gen is the best of any driver on any oval in the format. He won the All-Star race at Dover earlier this month.
Goodyear is bringing the same left- and right-side tire combination it used at the Coca-Cola 600 — the sixth race this season for Goodyear's intermediate-track setup. "One of our main goals at concrete tracks like Nashville is to rubber in the racing surface," Rick Heinrich, Goodyear's NASCAR product manager, said in the company's release.
Hendrick Motorsports has not won a pole through 13 races this season. The last time the organization opened a season without a pole through 13 races was 1987.
The 36-race version of the same streak arrived at Charlotte last weekend. The 37-race version arrives at Nashville on Sunday.
The Cracker Barrel 400 runs Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern on Prime Video. It is 300 laps, with stages ending at laps 90, 185, and 300. Larson has been inside the top 10 for all five Nashville Cup races run since 2021. If he wins, the streak ends at his best track. If he does not, it goes to 38.