Kyle Larson won for the 30th time in his NASCAR Cup Series career in exactly the fashion one would expect.
He ripped around the wall at Homestead-Miami Speedway like few others do, forcing teammate Alex Bowman into a mistake, and taking the lead from him with seven laps to go.
The victory was his first of the still young season and adds him to a provisional playoff roster that currently includes Christopher Bell, William Byron and Josh Berry.
Larson actually fell from second to fourth on the final restart with 50 laps to go. At one point, he even tagged the wall a little too hard and needed to repass Chase Briscoe for third as a result.
But Larson regathered himself and methodically worked his way through the top-three and was 2.3 seconds back with 38 laps to go. His No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet ultimately lasted the longest on tires in a straight-up battle of longevity.
“It was far from perfect,” Larson said. “I gave up a spot and a half, almost two spots there by getting in the wall too many times. I knew I wasn’t going to get the best restart there. I knew I wasn’t good on the short runs and just thought if I could hold off (Denny Hamlin) and (Tyler Reddick) behind me, you know, I could get going on the top … but then I got in the wall and let him by.
“Just kind of had to keep plugging away at what I know and what’s good for me. So just proud of myself, proud of the team. Just a lot of gritty, hard work there today between damage on pit road, you know, qualifying bad, bad restarts, all that stuff.
Just super pumped.
“One of the coolest wins I think in my Cup career just because of the heart break I’ve had here, the heart break yesterday, and to just keep my head down and keep digging feels really good.”
Larson was referencing a 16 second lead on Saturday in the Xfinity Series race that was taken away from him on the final restart when Sam Mayer tagged his bumoer coming to the green. Larson had put all but the top-5 one lap down when that caution came out.
Did that go through his mind late on Sunday?
“That’s what I’m thinking every time in the lead, especially here at Homestead,” Larson said. “Yeah, just crazy. I knew me coming towards those guys, they were going to start moving around and making mistakes.
“I felt like if I could just keep pressure on Alex, I would hope that he made a mistake. He caught the wall there, and I got by him easier than I expected to. Still had to work hard, though. My balance once I got in clean air was really loose, just like those guys were.”
Alex Bowman continues a top-5 championship start to his season but is still seeking his first Cup win since July in Downtown Chicago.
“I guess I choked that one away,” Bowman said. “Just burned my stuff up. Saw the 5 coming, so moved around a little bit. Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit it hard with the right front and ended up just bending something enough that I lost a lot of right front feel and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad.”
Bubba Wallace led three times for 56 laps in his best overall race of the season.
“It was really good,” Wallace said. “We showed up here in Miami and had speed. That’s the first box you want to check. We all know when you are a race car driver, you want to show up and be competitive. We were that.
“We were okay in the race, and just okay. It really made me think of our balance is very similar to what we’ve had the last two years, and we’ve just been average. So I was just praying for track position.
“My pit crew has been on fire. Tremendous amount of work has gone into the last five years of this team to get to where we’re at. We’re not where we want to be, but we are damn sure competitive each and every stop. They got us up there, gave me a shot.”
Ryan Blaney led the most laps but suffered an engine failure inside of 60 laps to go. It’s his third such expiration in three races.
“I didn’t have any warning,” Blaney said. “It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang. We led a lot of laps. We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was gonna get back into it.
“It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
- Kyle Larson
- Alex Bowman
- Bubba Wallace
- Chase Briscoe
- Denny Hamlin
- Chris Buescher
- AJ Allmendinger
- Tyler Reddick
- Ryan Preece
- Justin Haley
- Zane Smith
- William Byron
- Austin Dillon
- Joey Logano
- Erik Jones
- Noah Gragson
- Josh Berry
- Chase Elliott
- Austin Cindric
- Michael McDowell
- Kyle Busch
- Daniel Suarez
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Ty Gibbs
- Brad Keselowski
- Ty Dillon
- Cole Custer
- Christopher Bell
- Todd Gilliland
- Ross Chastain
- Shane Van Gisbergen
- Riley Herbst
- Cody Ware
- JJ Yeley
- Ryan Blaney
- Carson Hocevar
