LONG POND, PA.: Kyle Larson was less than 2.5 miles away from winning his fourth straight NASCAR Cup Series points-paying victory and then it was gone in literally less than five seconds.
As Larson’s No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE exited Turn 2, his left-front tire blew approaching the Tunnel Turn which sent him into hard into the Turn 3 wall.
Larson, however, wrestled his damaged Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet across the start-finish line and earned a ninth-place finish.
After taking the checkered flag, Larson had no control of his car and hit the outside wall again in Turn 1 which is where his car came to rest. He climbed from his mangled race car uninjured.
Following a late race restart, Larson swiped the lead away from teammate Alex Bowman with four laps to go and appeared heading to continue an impressive month-long stretch of winning but ultimately suffered his worst finish since finishing 19th at Kansas Speedway on May 2.
“I guess disbelief still,” Larson said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center post-race. “I don’t know, a little bit laughable just because I can’t believe it.
“Hate that we didn’t get the win. Cool that Alex still did, a Hendrick car with another win. Cool to keep Mr. H’s (Hendrick) streak going.”
Entering Pocono, Larson was hoping to deliver five straight NASCAR Cup Series victories with recent victories at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway, Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway and last Sunday’s inaugural Cup race at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway – mixed in with the NASCAR Cup Series All-Star triumph earlier this month at Texas Motor Speedway – but the streak will end at four overall with Saturday afternoon’s result and 13th top-10 of the year in the Pocono Organics CBD 325.
“Hate that we didn’t get another win,” Larson added. “Would have been cool to win five in a row. Just wasn’t meant to be I guess today.”
Larson said he began to feel an issue on the last lap as he approached the Tunnel Turn, but he wasn’t sure what or how big the problem actually was.
“Yeah, I felt something like right in the middle of the tunnel (turn),” described Larson. “Wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. It finally kind of shredded halfway through the short chute there. Couldn’t turn.
“Hate we didn’t get HendrickCars.com into Victory Lane, but we’ll try to start another streak tomorrow.”
The 10-time NASCAR Cup Series winner believes he ran over something rather than his late-race aggression to retake control of the race led to the eventual outcome.
“I don’t think there were any tire issues all day,” sounded Larson. “I must have just ran something over, I guess. I was having to work really hard to get by him. I was honestly happy to see him get to the lead because I had pulled away from him so much, that run up before the caution.
“But then he was really fast out front. Just fast enough I could never get to his inside. He was running low enough; I was a little bit choked down.
“He was starting to get really tight through one. I was able to kind of use that to my advantage, fake him low a little bit, mess his angle up, get him tighter off of one. Was finally able to get by him. Thought we were going to get the win, but we didn’t.”
Even though a backup car will send Larson to the rear for Sunday’s Cup race at the 2.5-mile triangle, the 28-year-old believes his Cliff Daniels-led No. 5 team will prepare a backup car just as comparable as his primary.
I guess that’s one thing that’s probably keeping me excited and not depressed, is that we get to go back again tomorrow,” Larson mentioned. “I’m sure our backup car will be just as good as that one.
“Feel like we learned a lot about our car today. The track came to us a lot. I think we should be good tomorrow.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
