By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Fireworks lit up the sky, and smoke billowed from the tires of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as Christopher Bell celebrated his first victory in the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

On Sunday night, Bell climbed from his car to a standing ovation. Scratch that—virtually everyone in the packed grandstands already had been standing for the final 28 lap green-flag run, as Bell battled Joey Logano side-by-side and finally cleared last year’s winner for the lead on Lap 241 of 250.

At that point, Bell had better right-side tires than Logano, who had stayed out under the promoter’s caution signaled by unofficial flagman Michael Waltrip on Lap 215.

Bell pitted for two tires under the yellow, restarted sixth on Lap 223 behind five cars that stayed out and quickly advanced to second with a pass of Ross Chastain on Lap 227.

From that point, it was game-on for Bell, who pursued Logano relentlessly. On Lap 241, Bell pulled even with Logano, drifted out toward the wall, taking Logano with him and completed the decisive pass. His winning margin was 0.744 seconds.

“North Wilkesboro, how about that one?” Bell shouted after climbing from his car with the smoke still lingering from his celebratory burnout. “That right there is absolutely incredible. North Wilkesboro, best short track on the schedule.”

The victory was the first for a Toyota driver since JGR’s Kyle Busch took the checkered flag in 2017.

Logano, who led 199 of 200 laps in last year’s All-Star Race victory at the historic 0.625-mile short track, led a race-high 139 laps on Sunday to 28 for Bell. The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford held a comfortable lead when the yellow flag for the promoter’s caution—a new wrinkle introduced by Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith—slowed the action, forced a pit stop choice and bunched the field.

“I’m pissed off right now,” Logano said. “Just dang it, we had the fastest car. The Shell-Pennzoil Mustang was so fast. You get to… I’m trying to choose my words correctly on the caution situation. Obviously, I got bit by it, so I am the one frustrated, obviously….

“I’m all about no gimmicks with the caution. I am all about that. I’m a little… me and Marcus Smith aren’t seeing eye to eye right now, OK? I’ve got to have a word with him.”

The caution and the tire disadvantage ultimately prevented Logano from winning his second straight All-Star Race and third overall.

“Thought maybe we could hold him off, but the 20 had a good enough restart, cleared too many of them too fast,” Logano said. “I couldn’t get away in time. It took me six, seven laps to get my car up and rolling again.

“I did all I could do to hold him off, and he got under me and released the brake and gave me no option. Kind of just ran me up into the wall, and if I could’ve got to him, he was going around after a move like that. I just couldn’t get back to him. Just too much to try to make up with the tire deficit.

“Just frustrated after you lead so many laps and the car is so fast and you don’t win, it hurts quite a bit.”

It hurt even more because first prize money for the exhibition race is $1 million, and second place pays a small fraction of that amount. Bell was happy to line his pockets with the lion’s share of the purse.

It was the quality of the competition, however, that excited Bell the most.

“Man, that was an amazing race,” he said. “There were so many guys up there racing for the lead. We saw two-wide, three-wide for the lead. It’s just a pleasure to race here, and especially whenever you get to drive this Mobil 1 Toyota Camry.

“These boys (the No. 20 crew) have done such a good job on this thing. I told them going into it, this was the best car we’ve had in a long time. Joey was fast. He gave us a lot of competition, and the 12 (Ryan Blaney) was really good there and the 9 (Chase Elliott). They had competitive cars. The strategy—we knew it would be all over the place and it fell our way.”

Bell acknowledged that the urgency of passing Logano in the closing run forced him to push the issue.

“He did a great job of trying to keep me behind him, and I knew that once I got that run off Turn 4, it was like alright, I’m going to have to be a little more aggressive and kind of leaned on him and got him out of position.

“I knew once I got the lead, I had the tire advantage so I should be able to cruise, and it worked out that way.”

On the same tire strategy as Logano, Chastain held third at the finish, followed by Hendrick Motorsports drivers Alex Bowman, Elliott and William Byron. Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch, Chase Briscoe and Chris Buescher completed the top 10.

Kyle Larson, fresh from Saturday’s 21st-place qualifying effort for the Indianapolis 500, turned his first laps in the No. 5 Chevrolet on Sunday night. After a two-tire stop on Lap 178, he was running third when he slapped the wall on Lap 214 and finished 21st, three laps down.

By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

FORT WORTH, TX (May 4, 2025) — After Michael McDowell’s dream ended less than four laps short of the scheduled finish in Sunday’s Würth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY, Joey Logano took control and rode the NASCAR Cup Series rollercoaster to his first victory of the season.

A week after a missing nut on a spoiler bracket cost him a disqualification from fifth place at Talladega Superspeedway, Logano beat runner-up Ross Chastain to the finish line by 0.346-second in overtime to score his second victory at 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway and the 37th of his career.

In fashioning his first top-five finish of 2025, Logano successfully pursued McDowell, who had charged into the lead after a restart on Lap 245 of 271 and held it through two cautions and restarts.

On Lap 264, less than four laps from a finish, the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford went low on the backstretch, avoided a block from McDowell and passed the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet for the lead.

Passed for second by Logano’s Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney a lap later, McDowell lost control in dirty air behind Blaney’s Ford and slammed into the Turn 2 wall, ending his race in 26th place.

“Sorry, boys, I tried,” a rueful McDowell radioed to his team.

On the subsequent overtime restart, Logano made it look easy. The reigning series champion cleared Blaney through the first two corners, as Chastain charged into second from the bottom lane.

Two laps later, Logano was on his way to Victory Lane, having scored the second straight win for Team Penske after Austin Cindric won at Talladega last Sunday.

“The sport changes so quickly,” Logano said after climbing from his car. “It’s crazy how you can just ride these rollercoasters and just proud of the team. Finally got (sponsor) AAA Insurance into Victory Lane. They’ve been a partner of mine since I’ve been to Penske, so 13, 14 years. I’ve yet to win with them. It was awesome to get that done here.”

Logano had to work his way forward from his 27th-place starting position. He did so relentlessly and without the sorts of mistakes that doomed the winning chances of others.

“Slowly, methodically, a couple at a time,” Logano said of his drive. “We had a really tough pit stall situation. The pit crew did a good job of managing that and just grabbed a couple (of positions) here and there.

“The car was fast. I knew that yesterday. We just did a poor job qualifying. Just grinded it. Just keep grinding a couple here and a couple there and eventually get a win here. It’s nice to get one. Real nice.”

Similarly, Chastain started 31st and didn’t make his presence known until the closing laps.

‘Gosh, that’s a working day,” Chastain said. “Just no confidence in the car yesterday. Y’all saw that. Just the speed of the Trackhouse cars on Saturdays is just terrible. We’re just not confident, all three drivers.

“So there was one pit stop today that (crew chief) Phil Surgen and the group—it takes a ton of people back at Trackhouse and on the box here in GM at Chevrolet. They made me a confident driver all of a sudden with one adjustment. It was small stuff. It doesn’t even make sense, but after that I was a confident driver.”

Blaney came home third, followed by Kyle Larson, who led a race-high 90 laps but surrendered the top spot to McDowell on the Lap 245 restart.

“You don’t want to give up the lead on a mile and a half,” Larson said. “It’s hard to get it back. Yeah, Michael just did a good job timing it.”

Erik Jones was fifth, scoring his first top five since last year’s fall race at Talladega. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Austin Dillon, John Hunter Nemechek, Christopher Bell and Daniel Suarez completed the top 10.

Other expected contenders fell by the wayside as the race progressed.

Denny Hamlin’s streak of 21 consecutive lead-lap finishes—eighth-most all-time in the Cup Series—came to an abrupt end on Lap 75. One circuit earlier, Hamlin lost power with an engine the team was running for the third time.

As Hamlin slowed, flames shot from beneath the chassis of the No. 11 Toyota. Hamlin stopped the car, which was enveloped in dark smoke and climbed to safety.

“It was blowing up for about a lap or so before it really detonated,” Hamlin said. “I tried to keep it off to keep it from full detonating.

“That was so they can diagnose exactly what happened to it. It’s tough to say exactly what it is, but they’ll go back and look at it and we’ll find out in a few weeks.”

A promising run for Las Vegas winner Josh Berry likewise ended early on Sunday. Berry had led 41 laps and was running at the front of the field on Lap 125 when the treacherous bump in Turn 4 upset his No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford.

Berry slid into the outside wall, slamming the barrier on the driver’s side of the car.

“Just started to approach the lapped traffic,” said Berry, who returned to the track after repairs, 84 laps down. “You have no choice but to run the opposite lane. Your car is never going to turn if you follow them. I went around the 62 (Jesse Love) on the outside and felt pretty decent about it. Then caught the 51 (Cody Ware) and was working on the 51 and hit that bump and got loose.

“I don’t know what I would do too much different. Obviously, in these cars, especially at a place like this, if you’re going to be fast, it’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re going to be on edge. Unfortunately, it bit us today.”

In a race that produced 12 cautions for 73 laps, Austin Cindric led 60 laps but fell victim to a four-car crash on Lap 247. Ten laps earlier, pole winner Carson Hocevar, who led the first 22 laps but was relegated to the back of the field when caution interrupted a green-flag cycle of pit stops on Lap 219, suffered a similar fate in a three-car wreck.

William Byron, who finished 13th, retained the series lead by 13 points over Larson.

By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

FORT WORTH, TX — Crew chief Mardy Lindley called his shot.

“We’ve got to stop to win,” Lindley radioed to driver Kyle Larson, subbing for injured Connor Zilisch in the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet.

Lindley was right. Larson made a late pit stop and proceeded to win Saturday’s Andy’s Frozen Custard 300 at Texas Motor Speedway in two overtimes.

The victory was Larson’s second of the season, his second at Texas and the 17th of his career, with Larson charging from the seventh position on a Lap 194 restart — behind six cars that stayed out on older tires — to win in two extra periods.

On Lap 188, Larson was cruising to a probable win with a lead of more than six seconds when Corey Day — in the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Larson drove to a dominating win at Bristol in mid-April — hit the tire barrier on the inside of Turn 3 to cause the ninth of 11 cautions.

That’s when Lindley made the call to bring Larson to pit road, and ultimately it paid off. After moving from third to second on the first overtime restart, Larson took the lead from defending race winner Sam Mayer in the second overtime and pulled away to win by 1.265 seconds over Taylor Gray, who surged from fourth to second in the final two laps.

“It was a lot of survival, I felt like in that race,” Larson said. “I got in some wrecks, the balance we had to work on quite a bit. So, it was fun. I felt like if I could ever get the lead, I could stretch it out, but I couldn’t get by Justin (Allgaier). He was running where I needed to be.

“Thanks to JRM for letting me come run this thing here today. Obviously, I wish Connor was in the car, but it means a lot that they thought of me to call up to run this thing.”

As Larson worked his way through the field twice—once from the 20th starting position and again after an uncontrolled tire penalty sent him to the rear after the first stage break—Allgaier led a race-high 99 laps and kept Larson at bay until a cycle of green-flag pit stops in the final stage scrambled the running order.

It was during that cycle that Allgaier’s race came to an untimely end. Running 12th after pitting on Lap 153, Allgaier closed fast on the No. 5 Chevrolet of Kris Wright near the exit from Turn 4.

Wright failed to hold the bottom lane and drifted up the track into Allgaier’s line. Allgaier made a move toward the inside but couldn’t avoid Wright’s car. The No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet slammed into the outside wall in the tri-oval, slid down onto the infield grass and ended the race on a wrecker.

Allgaier, who had lost position to Larson during the pit sequence, was gracious in his assessment of the wreck that ended his day.

“The hard part is, ultimately it falls on my shoulders,” Allgaier said. “We’d about gotten crashed a couple laps before the green-flag stop there, and I think they had some damage and he (Wright) was having a bit of a tough time with his race car, and I’m trying to catch back to the 88 and trying to push and ultimately put myself in a bad position…

“Kyle and I had a great battle, and I was having a lot of fun with it. Obviously, the guy’s ultra-fast in anything that he drives… I think probably the most disappointing part about today is that it’s my mom’s birthday. I would love to get a trophy and celebrate her birthday with that, but instead I’m standing here talking to you guys.”

Allgaier’s exit opened the door for Mayer, Gray, Austin Hill and Nick Sanchez. Driving the No. 48 Big Machine Racing Chevrolet, Sanchez ran consistently in the top five until the second overtime, when he hit the wall and dropped to 20th at the finish.

Riley Herbst finished third after restarting sixth in the final overtime, with Hill coming home fourth, Mayer fifth and Harrison Burton sixth. Jesse Love, Ryan Sieg, Brandon Jones and Jeb Burton completed the top 10.