Just past halfway of the South Point 400, Kyle Larson completed a rough little half-spin into the exit of Turn 2, catching the wall pretty flush with his right rear but otherwise driving off without incident.
He was running second to Christopher Bell at the time, citing a car that was very clearly and visibly loose but the whole thing was kind of fortuitous in how it ultimately played out. For one, damage to the rear quarter like that generally results in a tighter handling car.
Alex Bowman himself hit the wall three laps later, resulting in a caution that allowed the No. 5 team to come down pit road and make adjustments was a godsend, and really a perfect storm of what could have been a championship ending scenario.
“It stepped out really quick,” Kyle Larson said. “Honestly, I was thinking I was just going to spin, then hit the inside wall. About that time, I clipped the outside wall, got lucky. Was just thinking that I was going to do it again because now my right rear tire was scorched.
“I was so loose for the next however many laps before the caution came out.”
Larson also was grateful for the outside retaining wall, because if that didn’t catch him, his No. 5 was going to spin down the track and hit the inside wall even harder.
“That would have been the end of our race,” he said.
Larson called it ‘kind of the perfect spin’ but his crew chief jokingly not jokingly wouldn’t give him that. Daniels said it wasn’t a 10 on the save for perfectly justifiable reasons.
“I said, ‘Man, everybody wanting to give it a 10, I’ll give it a 9.4,” Daniels said.
A … 9.4?
“Well yeah, he hit the wall,” Daniels said. “If he wants a 10, don’t hit the wall.”
A joke, of course, mostly.
“It was a ridiculous save, yeah.”
It was a save that not only at the time very well saved their entire season, but when Larson converted it into a win, automatically sent them to the championship race for the second time in three years since they were first paired together at Hendrick Motorsports.
In fact, it was three years in a row if you recall that they went to the owner’s playoff final four at Phoenix last year.
The win was even more significant because the contender that won the Round of 8 opener to advance to the final four has ultimately won the NASCAR Cup Series championship in four of the last seven years. That includes Larson in 2021 and Joey Logano last year.
Daniels has three weeks to meticulously prepare a car to win the championship while everyone else is racing for their playoff lives. With that said, Daniels says they aren’t taking any races off because they want to keep ‘our edge.’
“There are two more races to win,” Daniels said. “So now the way I see it is this. Now that we’re in the position that we’re in, we get to play those races to win, a late call, flipping a stage, if a caution comes out, whatever it may be, versus having to play the race for points. I think that’s the position it puts us in the next two weeks.
“From a team exercise, all those other guys are so good, they’re going to be pushing hard to win the next two weeks. I think we have to match that intensity so we’re going into Phoenix with the right level of intensity ourselves, get there with strength.”
For all the talk of overcoming adversity, it is worth acknowledging that Christopher Bell nearly made this a moot point, closing from over three seconds back to a near photo finish by the end of the race – a 0.082 second margin of victory.
Bell was leading earlier when Larson spun and this race was very much about the two long-time rivals, dating back to their dirt days, racing for the win and a spot in the final four.
“I mean, I don’t know what else I could have done, so I don’t know,” Bell said. “I feel like that was my moment. That was my moment to make the Final Four. Didn’t quite capture it. I don’t know. Coming to the checkered there, I knew that he was going to be blocking, so I’m like, I’m going to try to go high. He went high.
“I don’t even know if I had a run to get by him there coming to the line. Just wasn’t enough. A great day, great day for sure to get the stage points, get a second place finish out of it. I think I saw we’re minus two, so we’re not out of it by any means. It would have been nice to lock it in.”
And yet, he lives to fight another day, just three points below the cutline.
Kyle Larson talks Vegas, NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs
Larson credits Erik Jones moving out of the way on the final lap, laps that took place in heavy lapped traffic, that made the difference in holding Bell off.
“I wasn’t confident,” Larson said. ” (Jones) let us go, which I was very thankful for. Then I was like, the whole way down the back, I was hoping (Michael McDowell) was going to run the middle or the top. I wanted that clean air for the bottom. When he pulled down to the bottom, I knew I couldn’t follow him because it was going to choke me down too much.
“I didn’t really know what to do at that point. I thought my best bet or an opportunity for me to at least hold on to the lead offer of four was to go to the middle and hope I had enough grip. I hadn’t been there that whole run.
“I peeled to the middle and was really loose, knew that Christopher was going to be able to get a run. Thankfully he wasn’t able to get to my outside before the exit. Kind of looked in my mirror and had to zig and zag a little bit. He hit me square in the back bumper, kind of closed off the win for me.
“Yeah, got much closer than I wanted it to. Thankfully we were able to edge out a win. Thankfully Christopher ran us really clean there off of four.”
Larson says he feels parallels to their championship season in 2021 and like Daniels, he doesn’t plan on losing his edge behind the wheel either.
“Obviously it’s nice to win and lock in, you can focus on Phoenix,” Larson said. “At the same point you really can’t look too far ahead of yourself. There’s still two other races before then.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself going to Homestead. I want to have a great run there. I want to dominate honestly. I want to win both stages by 15 seconds and win the race by 30. That’s my goal.”
He said that with a laugh but in a way that you know he’s dead serious.
“I’m not thinking really ahead of Homestead yet,” Larson said. “Martinsville, as well. I want to go there and have another good run like we had earlier this year, go into Phoenix with a lot of confidence and momentum.
“I think if tomorrow I start worrying about Phoenix, then had two bad runs at Homestead and Martinsville, I think that would kill our momentum and confidence for Phoenix.”