Kyle Larson celebrated an iconic victory at the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night. The Hendrick Motorsports driver crossed the finish line 7.088 seconds ahead of his teammate Chase Elliott, securing a spot in the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. During his celebrations, Larson’s son joined him in the car for his victory lap.
Larson’s performance at Bristol was nothing short of extraordinary, setting a new record for the number of laps led by a Hendrick Motorsports driver in a single race.
Whilst speaking to the media after the race, Larson commented, as quoted by NASCAR.com:
“Man, that was just great execution all weekend by the team.
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“Practiced good. You’ve got to qualify good; we did that. Yeah, just had a great car. Thanks to the whole 5 team. They’re the best in the business.
“We dominate a lot of races, but we might not close them all out, so it feels really good to close one out here in this HendrickCars.com Chevy. We’ve got (team owner) Rick Hendrick here today, too. He hasn’t been to many races this year …
“Just a phenomenal car, could kind of manage my stuff and then really pass some cars there at the end.”
The emotional highlight of the night was undoubtedly Larson’s son joining him for the victory lap.
The race itself was filled with notable performances. Bubba Wallace secured a commendable third place, with Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell among those also securing spots in the Round of 12. Hamlin commented after the race:
“My aspirations were to win it, but it looked like the 5 (Larson) there was better than all of us,” Hamlin said.
“Solid car. I thought we were really good towards the middle of the stages, and then at the end, got too loose and couldn’t hang onto what we had.
“Overall, top-five day, good stage points, kind of in the mix, just not really as good as we’ve been here the last few times. But overall, I want to thank this whole FedEx Toyota team for giving me something I can move on with.”
However, the race also spelled disappointment for others. Ty Gibbs missed advancing by 11 points after a speeding penalty dropped him to a 15th place finish. Owning up to his mistake, Gibbs said:
“Speeding penalty is on me. You run the lights so close … it’s my fault. Unfortunate.”
Similarly, Martin Truex Jr., despite running strong in the early stages, fell short due to a similar pit road penalty, finishing 24th.
“We did good in the first two stages — we got a lot of points,” said Truex.
“I guess we would have had to run second or third to make it through. Who knows if we would have been able to? I wish we could have seen if we could have done that.
“I’m just gutted for my team. We worked so hard this week. We all put in a lot all season long, and in the last three weeks, just snake-bit. Can’t do anything right … .09 mph (over the pit road speed tolerance) hurts really bad to take the chance away to know if we even could have done it. I don’t know if we could have run second … maybe. We were close to it all day, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. I feel terrible for my guys.”
