NASCAR
Kyle Larson Joins 30 Win Cub with Second Homestead Triumph
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – At the risk of sounding repetitive, Kyle Larson winning at Homestead is of little surprise. Far from an expected dominant run from the 5, however, Larson came in clutch when it mattered most. Being gifted a long run to the checkers, Larson made the winning pass on teammate Alex Bowman with six laps left. Homestead’s master now has a pair of trophies from the 305.
For the majority of Stage 1, Ryan Blaney was the dominant force. At one point, the No. 12 Penske Ford had built up a 10 second lead. This large margin was only erased by a caution for a Christopher Bell spin, but Blaney still took the opening Stage. Pit stops after Stage 1 did see some contenders run into early issues though.
Stage 2 was more of the same for Blaney, taking command early and hardly looking back. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson pitting later under green for fresher tires though gave them the top two spots in this stage. Despite this loss, the 12 led all but 42 laps across both stages.
A spectacular three-way battle for the lead between Larson, Blaney, and Bubba Wallace would only end when the No. 12’s motor gave way. Blaney’s now seen an engine failure in two of the last three weeks, after going over six years since his last motor woes. Blaney left Homestead with 124 laps led but a 36th-place finish. When counting a Las Vegas crash, the last three weeks are also Blaney’s first ever back-to-back-to-back DNFs.
Wallace was anything but a flukey leader, holding command on the restart with 50 to go and driving away from the competition. Wallace only gave up the top spot to Alex Bowman, after having to check up with the 48 on his inside. Bowman quickly disposed of Wallace and tried to escape a hard-charging Larson behind him.
Despite doing a valiant job of hanging on, Bowman found the wall blocking Larson with seven laps left. This was just the window Larson needed to pounce and drive off to his second Homestead victory.
“It was far from perfect,” Larson said. “I gave up a spot and a half, almost two spots there, by getting into 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 the 11, 45, and 19 behind me, I could get ringing the top. Then I got in the wall and let (Briscoe) by. Just kind of had to keep plugging away at what I know, and what’s good for me.”
“Just proud of myself, proud of the team. A lot of gritty, hard work there today between damage on pit road, qualifying bad, bad restarts, all that stuff. Just super pumped, I think this is one of the coolest wins of my Cup career because of all the heartbreak I’ve had here, like yesterday. To just keep my head down and keep digging feels really good.”
“I’m thinking (no caution) every time I’m in the lead, especially here ay Homestead. Just crazy. I knew with me coming towards those guys, there were going to start moving around and making mistakes. I felt like if I could just keep that pressure on Alex, I would hope that he made a mistake and he caught the wall there. 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, like those guys were.”
“Hats off to the whole team, HendrickCars.Com, Chevrolet, Prime, Valvoline, the Hendrick engine shop, everybody involved. Hendrick Automotive Group, lots of Hendricks. Shout out to Darrell Jackson too, I think he said he’s gonna owe us a bottle of pappy, so we’ll go ahead and take that.”
Behind Larson, Bowman, and Wallace, Toyotas of Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin were in the top-five. Chris Buescher, AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Preece, and Justin Haley rounded out the top-10.
Larson is the 30th driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to eclipse the 30 win mark. Homestead may just be the beginning of another banner year for the Hendrick 5 team, with a lot of their best tracks coming up. Nowhere is this more true than Martinsville Speedway, site of next week’s Cook Out 400. Larson and the rest of the Cup field will be chasing the prized Grandfather Clock Sunday at 3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Written by Peter Stratta
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Photo Credits to Chris Graythen/Getty Images
