KANSAS CITY, Kan: In the closing laps of Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway, reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson found himself in a horrendous battle with brothers Kyle and Kurt Busch for the race win.
After an eventful Stage 3 which saw Larson take the lead, nearly spin-out from the lead, and eventually retake the lead on the final Lap 235 restart from Kyle Busch, Larson would find himself under attack from 23XI Racing’s Kurt Busch in the final 10 laps of the race.
With eight laps to go, Busch edged ahead of Larson’s No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE and the two carried their battle for control of the race to the exit of Turn 2, where racing inches from each other, Larsons’s car made slight contact with the wall which allowed Busch to escape with the momentum and to the race lead.
Larson attempted to hunt back down Busch for his second Cup win of the season, but settled for second, 1.413 seconds behind.
After the race, Larson said that Kurt Busch raced him cleanly for the win.
“I wasn’t upset with him or anything,” Larson said of Busch. “It was just hard racing there for the win. I knew when he got to my inside, I was struggling in traffic a little bit and he was able to get by and from there, I just had to hold on to second.
“We were racing for the win, so, I mean he never got into me so I was trying to squeeze the throttle and get position on him and I just got tight. That was fun racing with Kurt. The last half of the race I was trying hard the whole time.”
Many lost count of how many times Larson either scrapped, kissed or even slammed the wall in Sunday’s 267-lap race but thanks to its seeming-like bulletproof NextGen foundation, the damage was visible but did not hurt the speed or performance of his race car.
The most defining moment of the day occurred on Lap 181 when Larson put a slide job on Kurt Busch for the race lead.
A real slide job.
Larson’s No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE however broke loose in the center of the corner turning his car completely sideways, but the Elk Grove, California native never lifted and although he lost his momentum after sliding down to the apron of the race track, he never spun out and kept his car pedaling in the right direction and the race marched on with Larson trying to recover after he felt like he burned off the right rear tire.
“We just kept fighting through it,” explained Larson. “Thanks to my team for giving me a war machine. I hit the wall a lot today. I struggled when people put air on me, and I got really tight and I’d hit the wall. I just fought really hard today and overdrove it at moments.
“Just had to work hard for it. We’ll work on that and figure it out.”
“Happy with my car. The Toyotas obviously were extremely good today. They’re all in the Top 10 it looks like. They had the handling and a lot of raw speed.
“It was hard to hold off Kyle (Busch) and then I knew when Kurt got by him, it was going to be really hard to hold him off. I did my best. Just came up one spot short.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
