Another Homestead race, another disappointment for Kyle Larson. Larson came into the Homestead race secure on the championship 4 after winning at Las Vegas, but Sunday it seemed he wanted to put a feather in his cap by defending his Homestead win from last year.
It wasn’t too be. Instead, it was like the Kyle Larson of old at the South Florida track. Twice before, Larson has been a dominant car at Homestead only to come up short of the win. IN 2016 he led 132 laps and finished second, the following year he led 145 laps but finished third.
Sunday, after starting fifth, Larson took control of the race and by lap 54 took the lead for the first of 96 laps. He took the Stage 1 win and was third in the second stage.
Ryan Blaney, in desperate need of a victory, won Stage 2 and was leading but with Larson closing, the two frontrunners came to pit road for green flag stops on lap 212. Blaney slowed but Larson seemed to mistime his entrance, locked his brakes clipping the rear of the Blaney car then turning right glancing off the sand barrels on the end of the pit wall.
The crew tried to make repairs on Larson’s car, but a broken right front suspension doomed them, and Larson was forced to the garage.
“I was just trying to push it as much as I could,” Larson admitted. “He (Ryan Blaney) had a great car and I felt like if he was to come off pit road the leader, he was going to end up winning the race or beating me. I was just trying to maximize my pit-in, and honestly I felt like I was doing a really good job. I just didn’t anticipate him slowing down as much as he did. But on the replay, it looks like I just missed it by a lot. I need to look at data. I knew where the yellow line was and thought I was going to be under control getting there, and then yeah, he just slowed down – I locked the brakes up, slid to the right and clipped him and the barrels.”
Larson took the entire blame for the incident.
“I’m pretty upset at myself, more than anything,” he said. “Whether he got to pit road speed sooner than the yellow line or not, I could have just done a little bit better job judging it. I hope they (Blaney) are able to recover. I hope he can get a good finish or get a win and get the finish that he deserves.”
“Just a bummer, but we had a great No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy today.”
Larson said that as the race went on his Chevy faded and he was frustrated.
“There in the middle portion of the second stage, I was racing hard and got my tires hot,” he said. “If not for that, we would have been able to keep stretching the lead out in the second stage. I just got loose for a few laps, and then I could never recover from it. I was just kind of hanging on there at the end of the second stage and gave him control of the race, and it kind of just led to this. Just have to do a little bit better job.”
In the end Larson said there was a point getting onto pit road when he had to decide to hit the barrels, or Blaney.
“Yeah, I mean honestly, I don’t really know what I was thinking during the initial part,” he said. “I was trying to stay off him. As I knew I was going to probably hit him, I just locked the brakes up; I locked the fronts up and slid to the right and clipped the right-side of his rear bumper, and that kind of shot me even more right into the barrels.
Yeah, I don’t know – was in control in my car, I just didn’t anticipate him getting to pit road speed as early as he did.”
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.