Whatever magic Kyle Larson had been carrying through the Chase apparently decided to take Sunday off. Unfortunately for the NASCAR Cup Series points leader, it took his championship cushion along for the ride.
The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet endured a miserable afternoon at Phoenix Raceway, failing to score a single stage point before a late tire failure sent Larson careening into the outside wall and out of the race with 28 laps remaining.
Larson was credited with a 34th-place finish, which is generally not how championship leaders want to spend a Sunday afternoon. Especially when they arrive with a 49-point advantage and leave with barely enough breathing room to survive a sneeze.
The damage to his championship hopes wasn’t quite terminal, but it was substantial. Larson’s lead over Denny Hamlin entering Phoenix has evaporated, and Christopher Bell now sits just five points behind him with three races remaining in the Chase. With Tyler Reddick’s victory tightening things further down the order, just 56 points separate the championship lead from seventh place.
Suddenly, what looked like Larson’s championship to lose has become a proper fight.
And it wasn’t as though Sunday offered many clues that things were about to improve.
Larson started the day on the back foot after struggling in Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions, leaving him 22nd on the grid. From there, the afternoon became an exercise in trying to find speed that simply wasn’t there.
A late two-tire stop in Stage 1 briefly offered some hope. Larson gained track position and appeared to have an opportunity to collect valuable stage points. Then his Chevrolet began shedding positions as though they were optional equipment, and he finished the opening stage back in 22nd.
Stage 2 wasn’t much kinder. Larson continued losing ground and eventually fell a lap down, leaving his team searching for ways to salvage an afternoon that was rapidly becoming a write-off.
When a caution came out on Lap 158, the leaders headed for pit road while Larson stayed out to take the wave-around and return to the lead lap. It was a necessary move, but it hardly transformed his fortunes. He finished Stage 2 in 27th, still without a stage point to his name.
Meanwhile, several of Larson’s closest championship rivals were busy doing precisely what he couldn’t.
Joey Logano swept both opening stages to collect 20 points. Bell added 16, Chase Briscoe scored 15, and both Blaney and Hamlin picked up 12. In other words, while Larson was trying to coax something useful out of an uncooperative Chevrolet, his rivals were quietly helping themselves to the points he could ill afford to surrender.
Still, there was time to recover. Larson had worked his way up to 15th in the final stage, and a top-10 finish wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Then came Lap 282.
A tire failure sent the No. 5 Chevrolet hurtling up the track entering Turn 1, where it slammed into the outside retaining wall. The damage was significant enough to end Larson’s afternoon, sending him behind the wall and leaving his championship campaign with considerably more questions than answers.
Larson admitted afterward that the Hendrick Motorsports team had never found the improvements it needed.
“This No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet wasn’t going to quit today,” Larson said. “We never found the improvements we needed, so that was a bummer. I didn’t expect to be good, but I didn’t expect to be that bad either.”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the afternoon’s entertainment value, either.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun today, but we were just trying to salvage what we could of the day.”
There was little else to do. Larson’s race was over, his points cushion had been slashed, and the competition had been handed an opportunity it probably hadn’t expected to receive.
Now comes Talladega Superspeedway, where Larson will need to put Phoenix firmly in the rearview mirror. The good news is that he’s had success on superspeedways. The bad news is that Talladega is the sort of place where a driver can do absolutely everything right and still wind up looking like he’s been introduced to a particularly angry washing machine.
Larson knows the answer is to focus on what comes next rather than dwell on what went wrong.
“We’ll go to Talladega (Superspeedway) and try to forget about today and get back after it,” he said. “We’ve done well at the superspeedway’s, so hopefully we can execute, get some points and keep ourselves in the hunt.”
The championship leader remains the championship leader, but his margin for error has all but disappeared. Bell is five points back, Hamlin remains in the mix, and the rest of the contenders have every reason to believe the door is open.
Larson has spent much of the Chase looking like a man with everything under control. Phoenix reminded everyone that control is a rather fragile thing in NASCAR, particularly when tires start exploding and the championship standings begin moving faster than the cars.
Three races remain. Five points separate Larson from Bell.
The magic isn’t necessarily gone. But it could certainly use a little help from the crew chief.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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