Kyle Larson used Bristol this weekend to show why he is regarded as the best driver of the current generation. On Saturday, he led 276 of 300 laps to win the Xfinity Series race. On Sunday, he led 411 of 500 laps to win the Cup Series race. While his dominance is praiseworthy, not all NASCAR fans were pleased with watching him go uncontested throughout the races.
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The argument is that it is the job of the promoter to prevent such dominances and make races more interesting. And so, when a questionable piece of statistics came to light after Sunday’s race, the online fandom completely lost it. Jeff Gluck and Steven Stumpf posted on X about how the race had the longest green flag run (200+ laps) ever in the stage racing era.
Gluck expressed his shock by writing, “Holy shit. Longest run of the entire stage racing era right now, folks (in terms of laps, anyway).” NASCAR reporter Cole Cusumano came up with more facts and figures that irked the community. He revealed that there were 2,139 passes between the 39 drivers over 460 green-flag laps.
That is the second least in five Next-Gen era starts at the track. Also, the four lead changes were the least since the fall race in 2008. Such numbers attested to the argument that races at the Bristol Motor Speedway are not what they once used to be. The reactions of a few fans to Gluck’s post summed up the overall sentiment in the camp.
One fan lamented, “Absolute snooze fest of a race. Appreciate Larson’s dominance, but my goodness, what a shadow of what Bristol used to be.” Neither too many cautions nor too few are appreciated by the fandom. There needs to be a balance. If not, there at least needs to be passes between competitors to make things interesting. Sunday had none.
This led to a fan saying, “If there was passing, it would be fine… but there isn’t.” One fan responded to Gluck’s surprise, “Not history we were looking to make.” Over 200 laps under green with a single driver in the lead does not reflect positively on the sport. It does on Larson, though. Another declared, “Absolutely dull. Not worth watching.”
It was the final 235 laps of the race that went by without caution. Needless to say, Larson was the one person who enjoyed all the green flag laps the most.
He said, “However many laps of green we ran, there was a lot of fun.” Denny Hamlin finished the race in second place after a long-drawn battle with the Hendrick Motorsports driver.
