There are two kinds of NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Texas Motor Speedway. The boring kind, where everyone runs in a polite little queue like it’s rush hour in Plano, and the other kind—Saturday’s kind—where the entire field seems intent on turning the track into a recycling yard.
In the middle of that mess, Kyle Larson dropped in like a meteorite, torched the competition, and rolled out of Fort Worth with a trophy, some bragging rights, and a frozen custard cowboy hat that might as well have said “I’m just better than you.”
Larson, normally busy terrorizing the Cup Series, was a late addition to the Xfinity lineup after rookie Connor Zilisch hurt his back in a last-lap Talladega wreck. JR Motorsports phoned in the big guns, handed him the keys to the No. 88 Chevrolet, and told him to keep it clean. He did but he also kept it fast.
Fast enough to overcome an uncontrolled tire penalty. Fast enough to survive not one but two overtimes. Fast enough to lead 32 of the final laps and still have a 1.265-second lead when the checkered flag dropped after 208 punishing circuits around the high-banked hellscape that is Texas Motor Speedway.
That’s right—208 laps. This wasn’t a race. This was attrition on four wheels. Eleven caution flags. Sixty-two laps under yellow. Twenty-four of 38 cars involved in crashes. If you had a car that didn’t look like it had been dropped off a parking garage, you probably finished outside the top ten.
Taylor Gray had the run of his life, a career-best second in the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, which is like playing your first game of poker with the big boys and leaving with most of your chips still intact. Riley Herbst came home third, and Austin Hill and Sam Mayer rounded out the top five, mostly by keeping their noses clean and avoiding the mechanical equivalent of bar fights.
But it wasn’t all good news for JR Motorsports. Because no one had a worse afternoon than Justin Allgaier. The man led 99 laps. He won a stage. He looked untouchable. And then he touched something—the back of Kris Wright’s slower No. 5 Chevrolet—at precisely the wrong moment during a round of green flag stops, and everything turned to twisted metal and regret. One minute you’re dominating, the next you’re skidding through the infield grass with your race in the dumpster and 35th place to show for it. At least he leaves having won Stage 1.
And that, in a nutshell, is Texas. It giveth, it taketh, and it usually does both at 190 mph.
For Larson, it’s another win on a side quest—his second in three Xfinity starts this season and 17th overall in the series. He makes it look absurdly easy, but don’t be fooled. Texas tried to eat him too. It just couldn’t chew fast enough.
The Xfinity Series heads next to Charlotte for the BetMGM 300 on May 24. The field will regroup. The teams will repair. And somewhere, Larson will be lurking, waiting for the next opportunity to turn someone else’s bad luck into another victory.
Because sometimes, when the chaos comes, it’s not about surviving—it’s about knowing exactly when to pounce. And Kyle Larson? He’s perfected the art of the ambush.
RACE RESULTS
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" 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, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.