TALLADEGA, Ala. — Kyle Larson won’t sugarcoat the fact that superspeedway racing has been an Achilles heel in his NASCAR career.
Entering Sunday’s Cup Series playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, Larson sat just 18 points above the cutline after a blown tire limited his day last week at Kansas Speedway. And with just one career top-five at drafting tracks, it didn’t set up as a recipe for success on Sunday.
But at the most important time possible, something clicked for Larson and his Hendrick Motorsports team. He scored points in both stages, avoided a 28-car melee with five laps to go and finished fourth – with a clean car.
The effort garnered 42 points, the second most among playoff drivers. Only teammate William Byron scored more.
So based on his track record, fourth place felt like a win for the 2021 series champion.
“It’s my second top five on a superspeedway in my career, in general, so I’ll take that. It’s really cool,” Larson said. “There’s a lot of luck that plays into just finishing these races. I’m not going to blame my whole superspeedway career on bad luck because I know that’s not the case when we finish as bad as we do, as often as we do, on these. I feel like we do a great job and today just showed that.
“We came from the back of the first stage and had a shot to win the stage. The second stage, we executed as good as we could and got some points. And then there at the end, got lucky on the backstretch finally and got a good finish. I’m proud of the effort from all of Chevrolet, all the key partners and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. We had a great Chevy and great power.”
Larson barely squeezed through the massive crash in the closing laps that claimed seven playoff drivers. A push from Brad Keselowski sent Austin Cindric around in the front of the pack, creating the largest crash in Cup Series history.
The Elk Grove, Calif., native restarted on the second row for the overtime finish but never had a shot at making a move for the victory. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won for the fourth time in his career.
“I was happy to be on the bottom,” Larson said of the final two laps. “If I could have chose outside or inside, even if I was in third place to choose, I would have chosen the bottom. It was working.
“I got the No. 6 (Brad Keselowski) clear of the No. 47 (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.), which is what I wanted to do. I was anticipating the No. 47 having a run back, and I was hoping that Brad would take that and I could kind of be leading the bottom lane. But yeah, he stayed down low.”
Larson’s only other superspeedway top five came at Talladega two years ago, matching his fourth-place finish in the spring race. He’s yet to record a finish better than sixth at Daytona and has finished just one of the six races since the reconfiguration at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
But more importantly, he’s 52 points above the cutline heading to the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL next weekend. It eliminates most pressure and adds a cushion if something were to go wrong in the final road course race of the season.
“It’s cool to finally go into the Charlotte ROVAL with a 52-point gap,” he said. “That race is so stretch. It’s way more stressful to me than Talladega Superspeedway, so glad to not have to worry about it as much.”