Apart from his convincing victory in the NASCAR All-Star Race, Kyle Larson has struggled in his last two Cup Series races, and Sunday’s race was no exception.
Although Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team struggled in both his races at Darlington, S.C., and Charlotte, he did manage to win the $1 million first prize for his All-Star triumph in North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway’s NASCAR comeback.
He placed 20th in Darlington after colliding with Ross Chastain dueling for the lead late in the race and also crashed out at Charlotte, which left him with a 30th-place result.
He qualified 22nd, and early in the first stage of Sunday’s race, Larson was running close to the back of the field, so this weekend’s racing at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway got off to a difficult start.
In spite of three red flags and numerous late-race restarts, Larson’s No. 5 team had numerous chances to put some work on his car. By making use of a two-tire pit stop, he was able to take the lead on lap 179 of 243.
Larson was pretty easily passed by final champion Kyle Busch, who changed four tires on his last pit stop, but he still managed to hold on and finish a respectable fourth.
“I want to be upset with fourth after running second there the last little bit of the race and having a shot to lineup on the front row for a green-white-checkered (overtime),” Larson said. “For a lot of the day, I thought I was going to run 20th on back.
“Huge thank you to Cliff Daniels (crew chief) and everybody on the No. 5 team for making the right adjustments. I don’t know if we were still amazing, but the strategy calls were perfect and at the right time and the late cautions fell at the right time.
“I think the car would have been fine had we just ran those last 50 laps under green.”
All four Hendrick cars were running 25th or worse for the majority of the opening stage, but Larson and Byron both moved into contention by the end of the last stage.
It was a fortunate situation for Larson.
“Proud of the effort today. It’s been a couple tough races. We’ve been so good all year long and the last few have been pretty bad and we’ve had to work on it quite a bit,” he said. “The team got us in a place where we could contend for the win, so you can’t ask for much more than that.
“It’s a whole team effort. And congrats to Kyle (Busch). It was fun chasing him down. I wish I would have done a better job.”
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Nascar, NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity, Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports
