Larson defending at Bristol — still winless

Kyle Larson shows up at Bristol this weekend with the strangest kind of resume: he is the defending winner of this race, but NASCAR says he also arrives on a 31-race winless streak. Sunday’s Food City 500 starts at 3 p.m. Eastern time at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee. (nascar.com) That drought looks even stranger because Larson did not just win here last spring. He led 411 of 500 laps, swept both stages, and beat Denny Hamlin by 2.250 seconds in one of the most lopsided Bristol races in recent memory. (nascar.com) Bristol is a half-mile concrete short track where traffic comes fast and mistakes come faster. NASCAR lists the track at 0.533 miles, with 500 laps adding up to 266.5 miles, which means drivers spend Sunday diving into corners every few seconds. (nascar.com) Larson’s 2025 Bristol weekend was bigger than one Sunday trophy. Bristol Motor Speedway says he won two of the three national-series races that weekend and set a NASCAR record with 687 laps led across the weekend. (bristolmotorspeedway.com) Now the contrast is the point of the weekend. NASCAR’s current driver page for Larson shows seven Cup starts in 2026 with finishes of 16th, 16th, 32nd, 6th, 3rd, 7th, and 32nd, which is enough speed to stay relevant but not enough to stop the streak. (nascar.com) The near-misses matter because Larson has not looked slow everywhere. He opened the season by starting on the front row for the Daytona 500, finished third at Phoenix Raceway, and started fifth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before settling for seventh. (nascar.com) Bristol also has a recent pattern that gives him a real opening. NASCAR’s weekend preview says Larson has been the driver Hamlin has challenged most consistently at Bristol in recent seasons, while Christopher Bell is the only driver with a top-10 finish in all six Next Gen car races at this track. (nascar.com) That means Larson is not walking into a random reset. He is returning to a place where his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet looked untouchable a year ago, on a track where clean air, tire management, and lapped traffic can let one fast car control an entire afternoon. (nascar.com) The schedule adds one more twist. NASCAR’s entry-list release says the series is coming off an off week, so Bristol is the first chance for Larson to snap the streak after a pause rather than in the middle of the usual weekly grind. (nascar.com) If Larson wins Sunday, the story becomes simple: the one track that made him look unbeatable did it again. If he does not, a place where he led 411 laps last year turns into one more race on a streak that has already stretched to 31. (nascar.com)