Kyle Larson finally wins a stage as he breaks superspeedway curse at Atlanta

Drafting tracks haven't been kind to Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson throughout his NASCAR Cup Series career. However, the 2021 champion's fortunes turned around in Sunday's Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta as he picked up a stage victory.

On the final lap of the 100-lap second stage, Larson wheeled his #5 Chevrolet to the stage victory by passing HMS teammate Alex Bowman on the final lap and by fending off a hard-charging Joey Logano. It's the first stage win of the season for the California native, but more noteworthy, it's his first career stage win on a drafting track.

While he's arguably the best driver on the NASCAR field today, the 29-time Cup Series winner has failed to produce results on drafting tracks. In the previous six Atlanta races, Larson's best finish was only 13th and he was caught up in accidents in all but one of them.

At Daytona, Larson has four top-10 finishes, but hasn't recorded a top-10 effort at the Florida drafting track since the 2021 Daytona 500. He finished 20th in last Sunday's Daytona 500. Talladega is perhaps Larson's best drafting track as he's recorded two fourth-place finishes there, but only has two other top-10 efforts aside from that.

Larson rolled off from the 17th starting position in Sunday's 260-lap event. He finished 17th in stage one prior to capturing the stage two win. His HMS teammate, Chase Elliott, was taken out of contention by a crash midway through stage two, collecting the likes of Corey LaJoie and Brad Keselowski.

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Kyle Larson seeking second career championship in 2025

In his debut season with Hendrick Motorsports back in 2021, Kyle Larson won a staggering 10 races in the campaign en route to earning his first Cup Series championship. Now, the driver of the #5 car will aim for his second championship in 2025.

Larson had an opportunity to do so last year as he won a season-high six races and made it to the Round of 8 of the playoffs. However, he failed to make the Championship 4, thwarting his chances at a second title.

Joey Logano, meanwhile, would go on to win his third career Cup championship and the third straight for Team Penske.

Kyle Larson joined HMS ahead of the 2021 season. Since then, he's made two Championship 4 appearances and is currently the winningest driver of the 2020s. Prior to that, he wheeled the #42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet from 2016-2020, winning six races with the team.