Track: Kansas Speedway
Location: Kansas City, Kansas
Track length: 1.5 miles
When: Sunday, 3 p.m. ET
Where to tune in: FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Race purse: $11,055,250
Race distance: 267 laps | 400.5 miles
Stages: 80 | 165 | 267
Defending winner:Kyle Larson, May 2024
Starting lineup:Kyle Larson nudges Chris Buescher from P1 to take Kansas pole
Team execution amid chaos is key to success Sunday at Kansas
If Saturday afternoon’s practice session was any indication, Sunday’s Cup Series race will be unpredictable.
Teams pushed the limits to find speed and were aggressive on air pressure in their tires which led to multiple issues for the likes of Brad Keselowski, Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs and Zane Smith to maximize pace during the short-run sessions. While teams will be more conservative in maintaining their cars for potential long runs Sunday afternoon, Kansas still provides treacherous moments for when drivers choose to push hard.
During practice, two-time Kansas winner Kyle Larson scrubbed the wall running the top line on the progressively banked Turns 3 and 4. Despite the contact, Larson still put in the ninth-best single lap of the session and was the fastest overall in 10-lap consecutive averages.
MORE: Cup Series standings | Full 2025 schedule
According to data from NASCAR Insights, all signs point toward Toyota taking back the reins at a track that they dominated in 2022 and 2023.
Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick are all listed in the top five in speed rating during the Next Gen era at Kansas, and three Toyota teams also have the best pit crews so far in 2025 with the No. 23 (Bubba Wallace), No. 54 (Ty Gibbs) and No. 11 (Hamlin) teams.
Three of 23XI Racing’s eight Cup wins have come at Kansas, but both Wallace and Reddick were snubbed from top 10s in both events last year.
From Wallace: “We wanted to give everybody else a chance,” he said with a smirk on Saturday during at-track media availabilities. “We decided to try something different and it didn’t work for us. I, myself, was very adamant on getting back to where we need to be when we show up to this place because when you show up to places that you’ve had success in, it breeds confidence, right? When you go into it and you have a lackluster day like my two races last year were, it hurts a little bit. Nothing’s ever the same. No matter how good you have it going, you always have to continue to evolve and somewhere we got off the path, but hopefully get it back.”
Both Reddick and Wallace were top 10 in single-lap practice speed Saturday. In qualifying, Reddick posted the fourth-best time while Wallace will start 15th for Sunday’s 400-miler.
MORE: Full Saturday recap
From atop the pit box …
What do crew chiefs have in focus to win Sunday’s race?
With Kansas’ tendency to provide great racing from start to finish, the final laps can come down to a pass in the final corner or who was just thousandths of a second quicker coming to the start/finish line.
The most recent spring edition at Kansas gave just that as Kyle Larson outdueled Chris Buescher by a mere 0.001-second margin in the closest Cup Series finish in history. For Buescher’s crew chief Scott Graves, seeing the replays make it almost impossible not to dwell on.
“The part that makes it hard is it they show it all the time, right?” Graves told NASCAR.com. “Guys that were on the Ricky Craven, Kurt Busch cars from the closest finish at Darlington — there was a guy that still works in the garage that was on the losing end of that one, and he thanked me last year after that finish because he’s like ‘now I don’t have to look at it every year.’ The ones that are that close, you always look at and think about what if, but you try to move on. You look ahead and you know that it’s a good track for us, so we always circle it as one that we can be really competitive at.”
MORE: Power Rankings for Kansas
Kansas has also been a track that shows a full team result where the driver and pit crew have near equal input in how they finish their race. Last year’s playoff race saw Denny Hamlin lose lots of track position on pit road as the No. 11 crew struggled to have a clean stop, but Hamlin was able to grind out a top-10 result to net a good points day.
Cliff Daniels, crew chief for Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, noted that their team has also had its pit-road woes at the 1.5-mile oval but that Larson has been able to make up for it.
“You can run so many different lanes,” Daniels told NASCAR.com. “Got cars that are good around the bottom, then you’ve kind of got a lane off the wall, then you’ve got a lane at the wall. It just makes for a really, really fun and exciting race. When you do have the track position, the critical aspects of keeping it are the details of the pit stop and being good enough on pit road and executing those couple restarts that are really critical to maintain your day.”
Kansas has been the home to the most speeding penalties at intermediate ovals in the Next Gen car with 37 since the spring race in 2022.
“We’re aware of it. It’s part of what we review every week, which I’m sure everybody does,” Graves said. “There’s hot spots on pit road that we’re aware of, and if you’re in a spot, you can pick in that area on pit road so it kind of takes those out of play. If not, then you just, you got to be aware of them and be careful. There certainly are some here. For the benefit you get from pushing pit road, it’s just not worth the penalty of having to go to the back of the field.”
RELATED: See where drivers will pit for Sunday’s race
History tells us …
Dominating Kansas doesn’t guarantee a win. The driver leading the most laps failed to win the last five Kansas races, the longest streak ever at the track. Moreover, the pole sitter has not won at Kansas in the Next Gen car and has only won once since 2018 (Kyle Larson, fall 2021).
He may not be the favorite to win, but watch out for …
ROSS CHASTAIN. A 23.5 average starting position through 11 races this season has been by far the worst for the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing driver since joining the team in 2022, but it hasn’t stopped the 32-year-old journeyman from grinding out top 10 after top 10. He’s tallied five of them in the last seven races and enters Kansas, where he won last fall, coming off a runner-up result at Texas Motor Speedway last weekend.
Fantasy update
NASCAR Fantasy Live expert Dustin Albino provides insight for your race-day lineup.
For the second straight year through practice and qualifying in the spring Kansas weekend, Chris Buescher leads the charge of drivers challenging Hendrick Motorsports and Toyota. Buescher had threatening pace over the long haul, ranking second on 10-lap averages and fourth over a 20-lap run. I‘ve added the No. 17 car to my lineup in place of Kyle Busch, who had speed in practice but slapped the outside wall during his qualifying run. An early qualifying draw dropped Alex Bowman to 21st in the starting lineup, but the No. 48 car is plenty fast to have available come Sunday.
Lineup: Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Chris Buescher.
Garage: Alex Bowman.
MORE: Get lineup advice in Fantasy Fastlane
Speed reads
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• NASCAR at Kansas: Key information, links, results through the weekend | Read more
• Welcome back, Miami: Homestead returns as Championship Weekend host in 2026 | Read more
• Clearing the air: Hocevar details midweek conversation with Preece after Texas comments | Watch video
• Rebound on the way?: JGR has cooled over the last few weeks, but is reignition on the horizon? | Read more
• Blaney’s best: Where can the 2023 Cup champ get to Victory Lane before playoffs begin? | View gallery
• Racing Insights: Full finishing order projections for Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 | Read more
• Turning Point to Kansas: Where chaos becomes the standard | Read more
• At-track images: Best photos, scenes from Kansas doubleheader | View gallery
• NASCAR Classics: All the thrills and intense finishes from the Sunflower State | Watch races
• Paint Scheme Preview: Fresh designs ready to tackle Kansas | View gallery
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