LEBANON, Tenn. — A week after the sudden and heartbreaking passing of celebrated two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, Richard Childress Racing driver Kyle Busch, the grieving sport leaves its Charlotte, N.C., home base and heads west to the Nashville Superspeedway for Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400.
Heavy hearts linger onward after losing Busch, 41, who passed away May 21 after being hospitalized with sepsis. The sport’s all-time winningest driver across the three national series was certainly a star on the Nashville concrete 1.33-miler with a pair of wins in both the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick arrives in Nashville this week holding a firm grip atop the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings – 122 points over his team co-owner, Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin.
Reddick has a series-best five wins and 10 top-10 finishes in the No. 45 Toyota through the opening 13 races His average finish is an incredible 5.54 and he is one of only five drivers in NASCAR history to finish on the lead lap in all 13 opening races.
Three of the five drivers atop the standings – Reddick, Hamlin and JGR’s Ty Gibbs – drive Toyotas, a make that has never won in Nashville’s five-race history, however.
Chevrolet drivers (Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Ross Chastain) won the first three races and Team Penske Ford drivers Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney are the last two Nashville race winners.
Larson boasts the best average finish (5.2) at Nashville and is the only driver with top-10 finishes in all five races. He’d especially love to hoist another trophy in the Music City this weekend considering the two-time and reigning series champion is currently enduring a 37-race winless streak.
A win would also go a long way for former Nashville winner Logano. The three-time NASCAR Cup Series champ has had an uncharacteristically slow season start and is ranked 18th in the standings – with only two top-10s – and among five of last year’s Playoff drivers not ranked among the top-16 in the standings. He’s finished 25th or worse in five of the last six races coming to Nashville – four of those results, 30th place or worse.
However, Logano earned an eighth-place run at Charlotte Sunday night, satisfied with at least an uptick in the finish, “That’s just where we are at the moment, but we just finally finished one, so thank goodness we finished one … At least we got a finish. That’s better than where we’ve been, so we’ll take it.”
Logano’s 8.6 average finish at Nashville is second best all-time to Larson. A Ford win this weekend would mark the manufacturer’s 750th all-time in NASCAR’s top series.
Toyota also has reason to be optimistic this week, despite its winless streak on Nashville’s concrete oval. Not only have Toyota drivers won seven of the opening 13 races this season, the make has been excellent at Nashville. … just not made it to Victory Lane.
The four-car JGR Toyota team, for example, has led twice as many laps at Nashville as any other team. Last year, Ford’s Blaney led a race high 139 of the 200 laps en route to victory, but Hamlin’s 70 laps out front was second best and he finished third. In 2024, JGR’s Christopher Bell swept both stage wins at Nashville and led a race high 131 laps only to be eliminated in a late race crash.
In 2023, JGR teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Hamlin combined to lead 131 laps en route to second and third place finishes. Hamlin led a race high 114 laps in 2022 but finished sixth.
Hamlin and is the all-time laps leader (344 laps) at Nashville and the JGR team has led twice as many laps as any other team – 727 laps compared to Hendrick Motorsports’ 335 laps led in second place.
Of note, two of the four JGR drivers – Gibbs and Chase Briscoe – have never earned a top-10 finish at the track.
Certainly Chevrolet, which has combined for five wins on the year, is energized coming to Nashville. Chevrolet driver Daniel Suarez won Sunday night’s rain-shortened Charlotte race giving Spire Motorsports its second win of the season – doubling the organization’s season win total and tripling its overall win tally.
