JOLIET, Ill. – Fair game.
On the last lap of Sunday’s Overton’s 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, Kyle Larson saw an opportunity to pass Kyle Busch for his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win of the season and it almost paid off.
After passing Kevin Harvick for second on Lap 248, Larson utilized his signature high-line drive to track down Busch for the win.
Busch found himself boggled in lapped traffic with two laps to go allowing Larson to close the gap considerably. On the white flag lap and in Busch’s tire tracks, Larson attempted to pull a slide job on Busch at the exit of Turn 2.
Not entirely clear, Larson made contact with Busch’s No. 18 Skittles Toyota sending his car into the wall. Burping off the gas momentarily to allow Busch to catch his vehicle, Larson zoomed by.
Staying in the gas allowed Busch to recover and stay within reach of Larson’s bumper and as the cars entered Turn 3, Busch made contact with Larson turning his No. 42 Credit One Bank Chevrolet sending Larson spinning off Turn 4 and Busch bouncing off the wall.
Busch was able to regroup and surge to his fifth win of the season, while Larson settled for second.
Afterward, Larson offered Busch a thumbs-up and insisted the contact was fair game after he initiated the first touch.
“I mean, I hit him first, so… I roughed him up, he roughed me up. That’s racing,” Larson acknowledged.
“I mean, I wasn’t really trying to make it in front of him. I figured if I ran in there to try and clear him, I would have had to slow down so much to not hit the wall that he would have just turned underneath me, and it wouldn’t even have been a battle to the win.
“Yeah, I mean, I didn’t initially go in there planning to run into the side of him. When I ran in there and figured I wasn’t going to have enough momentum to clear him and get going, I kind of made the plan to try and squeeze into him, to bog him down. It worked. Just he was able to get back to my back bumper into three.”
With about 10-12 laps to go, Larson said he felt like he had an opportunity to track down Harvick and Busch – but had some concern about his car was handling, especially after tagging the wall while trying to erase the deficit from first to second.
“As I started getting closer to Harvick, I felt like my balance was starting to get a little bit tighter, so I was getting a little bit worried. Then, yeah, I mean, I got, I don’t know, eight car lengths back or so from Kyle, I started getting even tighter.
He changed his line up a little bit, probably messed my aero up a little bit, but not much. I think my balance was just pretty tight at that point.”
After climbing from his racecar, Larson went over and chatted with Busch to make sure the two were on good terms, all things considered.
“I just went down and talked to him and said, That was a lot of fun,” added Larson.
“I have a lot of respect for Kyle Busch. He has a lot of respect for me. Yeah, I mean, like I said, that was hard racing. I had a lot of fun. I didn’t think I was even going to get the opportunity to race him side by side for the win like that. I was getting really tight behind him.
“Just from running really hard up top to try to catch those guys. I was able to, yeah, race him like that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, he roughed me up, then I roughed him up. I can’t be mad at him.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
