Kyle Larson was hoping to finally run a full 1100 miles this year.
In his first attempt at ‘The Double’ last year, a marathon effort to race in the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the same day, a rain delay at Indy meant he arrived late for the Coke 600 and had to sub in with a third of the race done. In his second attempt this year, Larson didn’t even manage to complete the full 200-lap distance at Indianapolis.
Larson’s time in the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 was not comfortable from the start. Rain at the start of the race was a source of stress for him and his team as they worried about making the NASCAR race once again. Once the race finally got going, Larson fell back from his 19th-place starting position when he stalled on pit road early.
Then, on lap 92 of 200, it went from frustrating to devastating. On a restart following a caution for a spin on pitlane, Larson seized a gap behind Takuma Sato to go for position and drove aggressively into the first set of corners.
He downshifted early while turning into Turn 2, upsetting the balance of the car and sending too much torque to the rear wheels, sending him spinning to the left and around before drifting up the track to the outside wall. Larson collected Sting Ray Robb as he drifted up the track, taking both cars out of the race.
“Just, yeah,” a disappointed Larson said after getting out of the car. “It was a bit crazy there on the start and I got tight behind Takuma [Sato], I was really close to him, and I think I maybe got a shade left of him. I haven’t seen a replay. I got loose and just kind of got all over the place and, yeah, so I spun.
“I just hate that I got a little too eager there on the restart and, yeah, caused that crash. So hate it for everybody that also got caught up in it. Just bummed out, so try to get over this quickly and get on to Charlotte and forget about it and try to win that one.”
Sting Ray Robb was hit by Larson as he spun up the track in the rear, spinning Robb fully around before he hit the wall himself, causing terminal damage to the car. Robb said that there was no way he could have saved that spin.
“Looking at in my head, I just don’t see a way to get out of that,” Sting Ray Robb said. “He just lost it and, yeah, we were too high to try to avoid it. Not much to do,” he said, referencing the slippery nature of the high lane at the track.
When the race ends, Larson will be credited with a DNF and a 28th-place finish, a much worse result than the 18th-place he earned in his debut. However, even last year was not free of mistakes by the driver, indicating the magnitude of the challenge posed by ‘The Double,’ even for a driver like Kyle Larson.
