What a weekend it was for the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing team. It all started during the Saturday morning practice session when Kyle Larson wrecked his primary car and had to go to a backup car for the race.
Despite qualifying 23rd, he had to go the back for the start of the race. However, it didn’t take Larson long to get the front with pit stops taking place. By the time Stage 1 ended, the California native finished sixth in the first stage. In Stage 2, Larson fell back just a little bit to finish 10th, only earning one playoff point.
It was a quiet day for Larson and his No. 42 team until the last stage when he became a factor. More so on the final restart, when he was trying to make things happen behind the leaders. However, Larson fell short, but still finished fifth after what could have been a weekend gone bad.
“I was pretty surprised on how fast our car was,” Larson explained to MRN Radio. “The last run there, I didn’t get into the wall but it was close. I kind of bailed out of the throttle and lost the momentum, so fell back to seventh. I was able to get to fifth there, happy about our finish, good points day. It was nice to have a good run with a fast back up car there. That’s two weeks in a row, we’ve been really fast in a backup car.”
“Just shows what we would really be capable of in our primary car if I just would stop crashing in practice. Got to work on that, but happy where our team has been lately. It’s a good time of the season to start running well. We definitely have the speed, I just have to clean up my mistakes.”
With the fifth-place finish, Larson scored his fourth top-five of the season and he currently sits 14th in the playoff standings, +37 above the cut line.
