HOMESTEAD, Fla. Kyle Larson, proved himself the weekends most dominant driver at Homestead-Miami Speedway winning two of the three national series races, capping off the extraordinary three-day performance with a victory in Sundays Straight Talk Wireless 400 NASCAR Cup Series race.

Larson was able to seize upon a miscue by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Alex Bowman, who put his pole-winning No. 48 Chevrolet in the outside retaining wall with six laps remaining Sunday. That contact allowed Larsons No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to pass him for the race lead and jet off to a 1.205-second win the 32-year-old Californians first series trophy of the year.

I knew me coming towards those guys they were going to start moving around and making mistakes and I felt like if I could just keep pressure on Alex [Bowman], he may make a mistake and he caught the wall there and I got around him easier than I expected to, the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Larson said. Still had to work hard though. My balance in clean air was really loose just like those guys were. Hats off to the whole team.

Bowman, who started from pole position, led 43 laps and was obviously disappointed even in a second-place outcome, coming so close to his first victory of the year.

Guess I choked that one away for sure, Bowman said, revealing he actually hit the wall harder the lap before he got passed. Just kind of burned myself up. Saw the 5 [Larson] coming, so I moved around a little bit.

Man, I hate that for this Ally 48 group they deserve better than that. Just a couple mistakes there. Felt like we were okay all day there.

23XI Racings Bubba Wallace finished third, leading a season high 56 laps in the No. 23 Toyota. Joe Gibbs Racings Chase Briscoe finished fourth in the No. 19 Toyota the afternoon proving to be season best finishes for Larson, Bowman, Wallace and Briscoe.

JGRs Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-five finishing order and won Stage 2 his 15 laps out front are most on the year for him.

The days most dominant driver was Team Penskes Ryan Blaney, whose No. 12 Ford led a race best 124 laps, only to suffer an engine failure with 60 laps remaining. A huge blast of smoke burst out of the car as it slowed abruptly onto the frontstretch from a top-five position.

He ended up 36th of the 37 cars, the 2023 season champion suffering his third straight DNF of the year.

I didnt have any warning, said Blaney, a runner-up in the previous two Homestead races. When I got back to wide open down the front, that was all she wrote. Just stinks. Really fast Ford Mustang, led a lot of laps, lost a little bit of track position with stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me, Bubba and Larson. Im sure Denny [Hamlin] was going to get back into it, it was going to be quite a battle in the last 60 laps or so.

Just didnt really work out for us. Well continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for giving me just a hot rod today, an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. Well keep our head up. Just one of those things where it isnt really going our way right now. But the good news is were bringing fast cars and thats all you can ask for.

Roush Fenway Keselowski Racings Chris Buescher rallied to a sixth-place finish, followed by Kaulig Racings A.J. Allmendinger, 23XI Racings Tyler Reddick, RFKs Ryan Preece and Spire Motorsports Justin Haley.

With the win Larson moved into second place in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, 36 points behind Hendrick teammate, Daytona 500 winner William Byron. Bowman is now third in the championship, 39 points back. The fourth member of the team, Chase Elliott finished 18th and is sixth in the standings

The promising start to the season a strong confidence-builder for all the drivers.

Had to keep plugging away, proud of myself, proud of the team, just a lot of gritty hard work there today between damage on pit road, qualifying bad, bad restarts all that stuff, said Larson, whose 30 career wins are now second only to NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon (93) and Jimmie Johnson (83) among Hendrick drivers.

Just super pumped, Larson said. One of the coolest wins I think of my Cup career just because of all the heartbreak here, the heartbreak yesterday. Just kept my head down and kept digging.

The heartbreak Larson referred to was his 2-for-3 showing in his three-peat attempt. He won Fridays NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race and suffered a gut-wrenching near-miss in Saturdays NASCAR Xfinity Series race an afternoon where he led the most laps only to get tapped from behind in an overtime restart and finish fourth.

Larson will attempt the three-race sweep at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway in April, hoping to equal the work of two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch who is the only driver in history to win all three national series races on the same weekend and he did it twice, ironically accomplishing the feat at Bristol in 2010 and 2017.