KANSAS City, Kansas - Between next week's NASCAR Cup Series All-Star Race, the following Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 and all of his duties at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in his pursuit of the #H1100, it's about to be a hectic couple of weeks for Kyle Larson.
A little momentum, never hurts.
Larson will have just that thanks to a signature, dominant performance on Sunday at Kansas Speedway as he led a track-record 221 laps, swept the first two stages and rolled to his third win of the season, piling up a little history along the way.
"I had some good pushes behind me today and learned some last week, getting beat on the restarts," Larson said. "Great to qualify good, it's really important and then, to kind of maintain the lead for the majority of the race was huge, so, just a great points day and happy to (win) here at Kansas again."
On Saturday during qualifying, Larson put the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet on the pole and he stayed there for the most part on Sunday. While out front in the second stage, he crossed over the 10,000-laps-led mark for his career, becoming just the third active driver to achieve that milestone alongside Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
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It also marked the 14th time in his career that Larson won both stages in a race. He added to that, the event's fastest lap, giving him the final bonus point and a 61-point outing.
Still, the win didn't come without some adversity. First, tire issues emerged sporadically throughout the day with Larson too experiencing sharp fall off at the tail end of runs. Also came an exchange to begin stage three as Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott beat Larson out of the pits to briefly inherit the lead.
However, Brad Keselowski crashed with 73 laps to go, bringing out the caution and mixing the field up again. This time, it was Christopher Bell who emerged at the front with Larson in second.
But it was short lived as on the following restart, Larson surged back ahead just as Kyle Busch spun on the backstretch, bringing out the yellow flag again. Larson was shown as the leader at the time of caution and thus took the lead again for the last time. He paced the final 55 laps with the rubber holding on just long enough to keep Bell and third-place Ryan Blaney at bay.
"I was trying really hard to pace myself because I believe that was our longest run of the day," Larson said. "I had been struggling a little bit at the end of the runs. (Elliott was really good. I felt like I needed to try to be better on my end and I don't know if it was paying off or not, I was still struggling, I don't know if the right front was starting to wear a lot or what, but I started to lose a lot of grip and then I was vibrating really bad.
"Great car. Great execution too for our team."
Larson, Elliott and Alex Bowman were all remarkably consistent throughout the first two stages. Larson won both, Elliott finished second in both and Bowman came home sixth in the first and seventh in the second with all three racking up valuable points along the way.
Elliott would eventually finish 15th while Bowman earned a hard-fought, fifth-place finish despite some contact with the wall during stage two.
"We were really fast with our Ally 48 Chevy - just hats off to everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, you don't get cars that are that fast that often," Bowman said. "Super pleased with my race car, crashed it on the restart in stage two and it did everything worse the whole rest of the day and we still ran top five, so hats off to (crew chief) Blake Harris and all the guys."
Early on, William Byron flashed all the same speed his teammates had but fell victim to unfortunate circumstance when a right-rear tire blew, necessitating an unscheduled, green-flag pit stop. That put Byron a lap down and with the majority of the race going green, it was too big a hole to crawl out of despite a valiant effort and he finished 24th.
The NASCAR Cup Series will return next Sunday with the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Green flag is set for 8 p.m. and the race will air on FS1.
Who won the NASCAR race on Sunday?
- Kyle Larson, No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet
- Christopher Bell
- Ryan Blaney
- Chase Briscoe
- Alex Bowman, No. 48 Ally Chevrolet
- Josh Berry, No. 21
- Ryan Preece, No. 60
- Chris Buescher, No. 17
- Joey Logano, No. 22
- John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42
- Austin Cindric, No. 2
- Todd Gilliland, No. 34
- Corey Heim, No. 67
- Noah Gragson, No. 4
- Chase Elliott, No. 9 Prime Chevrolet
- Zane Smith, No. 38
- Tyler Reddick, No. 45
- Ross Chastain, No. 1
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47
- Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88
- Kyle Busch, No. 8
- Austin Dillon, No. 3
- Michael McDowell, No. 71
- William Byron, No. 24 RAPTOR Chevrolet
- Cole Custer, No. 41
- Carson Hocevar, No. 77
- Riley Herbst, No. 35
- Ty Gibbs, No. 54
- Jesse Love, No. 33
- Cody Ware, No. 51
- Justin Haley, No. 7
- Erik Jones, No. 43
- Bubba Wallace, No. 23
- Daniel Suarez, No. 99
- Ty Dillon, No. 10
- Denny Hamlin, No. 11
- Brad Keselowski, No. 6
- AJ Allmendinger, No. 16