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NASCAR Live Race Updates: Food City 500 at Bristol

Originally posted on Racing America on SI
By Toby Christie | Last updated Apr 13, 2025 12:52 PM ET

Welcome to the Racing America On SI Live Race Updates page for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Be sure to refresh this post throughout Sunday's race as the Live Race Updates story will be updated with the biggest moments from the 500-lap race including lead changes, crash replays, the winner of the race, finishing results, and more.

Pre-Race Updates

Food City 500 Race Info

The Food City 500 will be televised on FS1 and can be streamed on the FOX Sports App with a valid television provider login. Television coverage of the event will begin at 3:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.

For subscribers of the Max streaming service, NASCAR Driver Cam, which streams live in-car camera footage from every car in the field, will be available for today's race.

The overall race purse, which teams will fight for their portion of in Sunday's race is a total of $11,055,250.

The race distance is 500 laps around the 0.533-mile Bristol Motor Speedway, which equates to a 266.5 mile race distance.

The race will be broken into three Stages. Stage 1 will end at the conclusion of Lap 125, Stage 2 will end at the conclusion of Lap 250, and the race is scheduled to finish at the end of Lap 500, barring an overtime finish.

The winner of Stages 1 and 2 will be awarded one Playoff Point, and the race winner will be awarded five Playoff points. The Playoff Points will be added to the reseeded point totals if the drivers make it into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, and the Playoff Points will be carried through each round of the Playoffs by the drivers, who earn them.

The top-10 finishers in Stages 1 and 2 will also receive regular-season championship points. The Stage Winners will receive 10 points for the Stage Win, and the point total will decrease by one point througout the top-10 finishers in each Stage.

Denny Hamlin is the defending race winner of the Food City 500, and he comes into this event on a two-race winning streak. If Hamlin can pick up the win in the race, his Joe Gibbs Racing team will become the first organization in NASCAR Cup Series history to have multiple drivers with three-race winning streaks in a single season (Christopher Bell won three straight races earlier this year).

Alex Bowman on Pole for Food City 500

Alex Bowman took his second pole position of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season as he turned the fastest lap of the Next Gen era (2022) at Bristol Motor Speedway. Bowman's lap time was a 14.912-second trip around the half-mile track, which equated to a 128.675 mph average speed.

Food City 500 Starting Lineup

Click here for the full starting lineup

Repairs Made to Joey Logano's Right Rear After Qualifying Incident

Joey Logano caught the right rear of his No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford into the outside wall on the exit of Turn 2 during his qualifying run at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday.

Damage from the wall for @joeylogano's No. 22. pic.twitter.com/UW5L6Zgsme
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 12, 2025

The No. 22 team opted to make repairs to the car rather than going to a backup car. On Sunday morning, the No. 22 Ford was repaired, and ready to push to the grid. Kelly Crandall of RACER shared a photo of Logano's repaired car on X.

The bumper and right rear of the 22 have been repaired for the race today. Joey Logano smacked the wall pretty hard during qualifying yesterday. pic.twitter.com/mPlogZIc9d
— Kelly Crandall (@KellyCrandall) April 13, 2025

NASCAR Reapplies PJ1 Traction Compound to Bottom Groove Ahead of Food City 500

NASCAR applied approximately a four-foot-wide strip of PJ1 traction compound to the bottom groove of Bristol Motor Speedway in the turns on Thursday ahead of the NASCAR Truck, Xfinity, Cup triple-header race weekend at the 0.533-mile short track.

Following Saturday's NASCAR Xfinity Series event, which was won by Kyle Larson, NASCAR decided to reapply the traction compound to the bottom of the track prior to Sunday's Food City 500.

According to Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, NASCAR reapplied the compound in the exact same fashion that they applied it on Thursday, meaning it will remain a four-foot-wide strip, and the application machine was used at the same speed as it was put down on Thursday.

NASCAR reapplied PJ1 to the track surface for today's race. It was applied exactly (width, speed of machine, etc.) as was initially done on Thursday.
— Jordan Bianchi (@Jordan_Bianchi) April 13, 2025

Goodyear Adds Additional Set of Tires After Excessive Wear in Practice

After tires were being corded after just 40 lap runs in Saturday's NASCAR Cup Series practice at Bristol Motor Speedway, Goodyear has added a set of tires to the race day allotment for the 39 teams in the field for Sunday's Food City 500.

Teams will now have 11 sets of tires (10 sticker sets, and one scuffed set used in qualifying) to manage over the course of the 500-lap event.

NASCAR has added a set of tires for today’s Cup race at @ItsBristolBaby. That brings teams up to 11 sets for the race (10 race sets plus their qualifying set), which is the same number of sets they ended the spring ‘24 Bristol race with.
— Goodyear Racing (@GoodyearRacing) April 13, 2025

Denny Hamlin won last year's Food City 500 at Bristol, in a race that featured excessive tire wear. However, after Goodyear brought the same tire back to Bristol last Fall, many expected that the tire wear situation in the 2024 Food City 500 was an anomoly.

As a result, Goodyear brought the same tire back to the Food City 500, and everyone expected more of what we saw in the Fall, but tire wear has mirrored what happened at Bristol last Spring. While nobody knows what to actually expect in the race, as teams are able to make adjustments overnight to compensate for the unexpected tire wear, just about everyone expects tire wear to play a factor in Sunday's race.