Kyle Larson in Precarious Position After Rough Day at Homestead
Heading into the Round of 8, Kyle Larson recorded a NASCAR Cup Series-best six wins on the season, including two inside of the Playoffs. Without a doubt, he was the favorite to hoist the Bill France Cup. But after a tough afternoon at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Larson faces the stiff reality that he may not even get a chance to compete for a championship in 2024.
As Larson struggled early, and found additional trouble late in the Straight Talk Wireless 400, all six of the drivers that he was battling for the three remaining Championship 4 berths (Joey Logano locked one up with a win in Las Vegas) finished inside of the top-six on Sunday. It was a bad day for the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion to have a bad day.
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RESULTS: NASCAR Cup Series Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead
STANDINGS: NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Standings After Homestead
Larson's day started off promising from the second position, and as the field cycled through the first set of green flag pit stops in the race, Larson found himself very much in the mix for the Stage 1 win as he trailed only his teammate Chase Elliott on track. Then things went awry for the driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
On Lap 48, Larson suffered a cut tire in Turn 2, and he skidded into the outside wall. While the contact with the wall wasn't ultra-severe, Larson limping his car back around to pit road on a flat tire ruined some of the underbody components on his No. 5 car, which killed the aerodynamics of his race car for a large portion of the afternoon.
Larson would fall back to the 34th position due to the tire fiasco, and he would struggle to make up ground. By the end of Stage 1, Larson had only worked his way back up to 25th. Any hopes of scoring Stage Points were dashed as Larson was only able to muster a 15th-place finish in Stage 2.
However, a switch flipped for Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team as Larson's car came to life in the final Stage. With under 15 laps remaining in Sunday's race, Larson was in the runner-up position, and he was closing in fast on race leader Ryan Blaney. After a horrendous afternoon at Homestead, it looked like Larson was still going to secure his place in the Championship 4 with a win.
Then, it all came undone again for Larson with 13 laps left in the race.
Larson, who had been closing the gap on Blaney for several laps, got an incredible run off of Turn 2, and as the duo attempted to get around Austin Dillon's sluggish lapped car, Larson ran out of patience. Heading into Turn 3, Larson attempted to shoot the gap between Blaney and Dillon. Had he pulled it off, it would have been an intense, and hair-raising three-wide move for the lead, and win. An emphatic statement that he indeed was the Championship favorite.
There just wasn't quite enough room for the move. Larson would make ever-so-slight contact with the right side of Blaney's car, which would unsettle the handling on his No. 5 car. He wouldn't be able to wrangle the car, and instead of taking the race lead, Larson spun and took a trip through the grass below the apron in Turn 3. After the race, Larson said while the move ultimately didn't pan out, that he saw a gap and he decided to go for it in an effort to score a Championship 4 berth-clinching win.
"Yeah, I had a shot to win, so proud of my effort there, and then yeah just bummed that it didn't work out there into [Turn] 3," Larson explained. "Austin [Dillon] did nothing wrong. I was hoping he'd see me coming and maybe give me the top knowing I was running there. But he didn't. He kept running his line. There was a little bit of a hole, and I thought that might be my opportunity to win. If I could get clear of Austin, and get to the wall. Who knows how the exit of [Turn] 4 went, but yeah, just didn't work out that way. Yeah, unfortunate."
As a race car driver, your season is made and broken by split-second decisions. Even after the spin, Larson had no regrets as he believes with how hard it is to pass in the Next Gen car due to the wake of air behind the lead car, that the move he made with 13 laps to go was potentially his only chance to win the race.
"Well, I mean, you saw the previous 15 [laps]. I didn't have another opportunity before then," Larson said. "You just don't know if you're going to have another chance. So, that was as close as I had gotten to him, and felt like I had to make the move because just the way that the air is, and the grip is out of the tires, you're just kind of stuck. I don't think I did anything wrong. There was a gap, and I was going to try to take it."
While Larson didn't actually lose a spot on track with the spin, he would lose six positions on pit road on the ensuing pit stop under caution as his team had to reset the flap on his diffuser at the end of servicing the No. 5 car. The diffuser flap drops down as a safety feature designed to help keep Next Gen cars from flipping in spins.
Once the green flag came back out, it was clear that Larson's car simply didn't have the fight left in it, and the championship favorite struggled to a 13th-place finish. And on a day where his competitors for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series title all had incredible days from a points standpoint, it was a worst case scenario for Larson.
Larson came into Sunday's race at Homestead third in the Playoff Standings, 35 points above the cutline. After Tyler Reddick won the race to secure his berth into the Championship 4, and virtually everyone else had a solid points day, Larson will leave South Florida seven points outside of the cutline in the fifth position in the standings.
Now, the California native's championship hopes rest on having a near-perfect day at a track, Martinsville Speedway, which admittedly is not one of his best next weekend. While Larson has four DNFs in 19 starts at the 0.526-mile short track in Virginia and has finished inside the top 10 in less than 40 percent of his races there, he is cautiously optimistic as his performance at Martinsville has improved since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
“Yeah, we’ve been strong at Martinsville (Speedway) at times, so we’ll see. It’s not my best track, but I’ve been a lot better there since I joined Hendrick Motorsports," Larson said. "We just need to qualify well and give it our best shot.”
Of Larson's five career top-five finishes at Martinsville Speedway, four of them have come since moving to Hendrick Motorsports. Heading into next weekend's Xfinity 500, Larson is on a four-race top-10 finishing streak. That finishing streak includes his lone Martinsville win in 2023, as well as a pair of second-place finishes.
Larson, who won the final race of the Round of 16 of the Playoffs at Bristol and the final race of the Round of 12 at the Charlotte ROVAL, hopes to keep his streak of winning in the final race of a Playoff round alive this weekend at Martinsville Speedway. But if his incredible 2024 season ends without making it to the Championship 4, Sunday's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway will without a doubt the biggest reason that the bid came up short.
Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.