HOMESTED, Fla. — The sixth Cup Points race of the season has a considerable plot despite Kyle Larson’s bid to sweep the weekend with the resumption of overtime at the Xfinity race on Saturday.
The green flag for today’s Cup Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway is scheduled to wave at 3:12pm ET. The race will air on FS1.
There are a few things to see at today’s 267 lap race.
A familiar face in front
Tyler Reddick went from third to first on the final lap, passing Ryan Branny for the lead, earning him a victory at Homestead last fall.
Blaney was second (for the second year in a row at Homestead), Denny Hamlin was third, Christopher Bell was fourth, and Chase Elliott was fifth.
Most of them, if not all of them, are in front. He spuns alongside Kyle Larson while leading Branny in the second half of last year’s race. Larson averaged over 20, 25 and 30 consecutive laps in practice on Saturday.
All five Cup Point races this season have been won by drivers with the last name starting with B, nearly half of the Cup races since 2023.
Typically, this South Florida track has a 12-month gap between races, but since the latest Cup race here, it’s only about five months, including the offseason. Adding to the fact that there were no major rules changes to the cars this season, it’s likely that it will be the same group as today.
“The best drivers are the best drivers, so it’s hard to hold them down,” Hamlin said. “And the best teams are the best teams. …We weren’t here so I think we have the same five or six that we dominated the race last time.
Keep an eye on Chase Elliott
At an event last fall, Chase Elliott led the race high 81 lap. While he took part in today’s race with three consecutive top-10 finishes, the 10th place results in Phoenix and Las Vegas have been hoped for a bunch of No. 9 over the past two weeks.
“There were some high spots, some low spots,” Elliott said of the season. “The first three weeks, four weeks if we included a crash, everything was really good. There was a car and a car that made exactly what I wanted. We crashed the first three weeks of the season, so that was a shame.
“I’m not going to sit here and say it’s good because Phoenix or Vegas wasn’t. I know that. You know that.
“We were really good in the fall. It was probably our best homestead race, perhaps with this new car.
Elliott starts race 18 today.
#NASCAR…Chase Elliott discusses the beginning of his season, how he should do it even after finishing 10th in the last two weeks, and how he has hopes for today’s race at Homestead. pic.twitter.com/fz0kpfrb7o
– Dustinlong (@dustinlong) March 23, 2025
Track Briscoe learning a new system in Jgr
A new ride at Joe Gibbs Racing was the start of the season’s roller coaster for Chase Briscoe.
After winning pole in the Daytona 500 and finishing fourth, NASCAR was punished by the team for violations. The team later won that appeal and the penalty was gone, but Briscoe hasn’t finished better than 14th since Daytona.
This is the second consecutive cup race at a 1.5-mile speedway.
Brisco, who finished fourth in today’s race, said he has to adapt to how things are done in JGR.
“I think it was definitely a bigger adjustment than I thought,” he said. “I just thought I was going in, so I’d do the normal type of driving and get faster. There’s definitely still. Wherever we went, we first did something that would become natural.
“That’s the biggest difference is adjusting everything. They really make you think, ‘You really need to focus on this. You can do this differently, you can do this differently, you can do this differently.”
“So, the last two weeks, especially last week in Vegas, I’ve never driven Vegas that way in my life, and it was like going to a whole new racetrack.
Briscoe took part in the Goodyear tire test in Charlotte this week, along with Ryan Branny and William Byron. Crew chief James Small said he wanted to test, “I want to get more rap, work with them and understand more (Brisco) in order to try and understand how to adapt to ours.”
