CONCORD, N.C. – Kyle Larson overcame an early alternator problem to charge back through the field and win the Bank of America ROVAL 400 Sunday afternoon at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
The victory, his seventh overall this season, is his third on a road course this year. He’s the first competitor in NASCAR Cup Series history to win three road courses races in a single season.
“It’s so satisfying because I really did not think we were going to have a shot to win today,” Larson said.
RESULTS: Bank of America ROVAL 400
The Bank of America ROVAL 400 served as the final race in the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Kevin Harvick, William Byron, Christopher Bell and Alex Bowman were eliminated from the playoffs at the conclusion of the race.
While many of Larson’s other victories this year have looked easy, this one was far from it. Early in the race Larson reported he was loosing voltage in the car, indicating a problem with his battery, alternator or both.
The team was able to discover that the alternator belt had come off, leading to the loss of voltage. The team replaced the battery during an early pit stop to by themselves some time before replacing the alternator belt during the caution period at the end of the second stage.
“It wasn’t looking too good,” Larson said. “Thankfully, everybody on our No. 5 car did a great job of staying calm. Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) as always, did a great job of communicating with me about what was going on and getting the battery changed and the alternator (belt) changed and whatever it takes to get our battery running.”
After replacing the alternator belt, Larson fell to 36th in the field with nowhere to go but forward.
Forward is exactly where Larson went. He stormed back through the field and when the caution flag waved for debris off the damaged car of Chase Elliott with 23 laps left, Larson was back in contention.
Larson joined most of the field on pit road for tires and fuel during the caution period and he restarted seventh while Denny Hamlin opted not to pit and inherited the lead from William Byron.
From there the battle was on. He quickly moved up to fourth behind Hamlin, Tyler Reddick and Byron and was eventually able to battle his way up to second Joey Hand and Corey LaJoie crashed in turn two to bring the caution back out.
Larson did his best to take the lead away from Hamlin during the next restart with 14 laps left, but Hamlin held serve. Larson briefly lost the runner-up spot to Reddick during this brief exchange, only to get it back a few laps later.
The final caution of the day waved when Harvick missed turn one and slammed into the wall to end his race and his championship hopes. That gave Larson one more shot at Hamlin and one more shot was all he needed.
The race resumed with eight laps left and Larson went straight to work challenging Hamlin for the lead. As they raced through the infield turns three and four Larson got to Hamlin’s inside and muscled his way into the race lead.
“We had some good restarts there at the end and I was able to kind of use my tire advantage to get under Denny and kind of squeeze some real estate off of (turn) four there,” Larson explained.
At that point Hamlin fell into the clutches of Reddick, who also dispatched him quickly. Now with clear sailing in front of him, Larson led the remainder of the distance to earn his seventh victory of the year and sweep the season at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“A lot of stuff worked out for us,” Larson said. “I couldn’t believe I got the lead that early on the restart.”
Reddick ended up second, his best finish of the season for Richard Childress Racing.
Byron, who had to win in order to advance to the next round of the playoffs, was running third with two laps left when he went off course and nosed his Chevrolet into a barrier. He was able to continue, but he dropped down the finishing order to 11th.
That gave third-place to Roush Fenway Racing’s Chris Buescher, who registered his first top-five of the season. Kyle Busch and Hamlin completed the top-five.