Kyle Larson has had some great races in his young career, but the 2016 AAA 400 might have been the best race of his career yet.
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Understand this much: Chase Elliott is going to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race and it’s likely to be sooner rather than later. Chase Elliott made a late push and finished third in the No. 24 Chevrolet.
TROUBLE FOR TONY: A broken track bar and punctured oil tank sent Tony Stewart to the pits with 58 laps to go after his auto spread fluid on the track, causing the 10th caution. He bumped Kenseth slightly, swung to the inside and raced side by side.
He was responsible for a pileup straight out of the Talladega Superspeedway highlight reel that knocked out a slew of drivers who raced up front all race and brought it to a halt with less than 50 laps left.
Truex led 47 laps and seemed poised to earn his first win of the season. He’s sitting in Victory Lane and I’m not, so maybe I need to do something a little bit different, but nothing insane to take him out or anything… maybe use the bumper a little bit. I got to second on the restart and just tried to be patient. I don’t know what happened, but it was nice of Kyle to say something (on his radio)… Kenseth would hold off Larson over the final 35 laps to get his third career win at Dover. “Matt has raced me with a ton of respect so I wanted to do my part and race him with a lot of respect”.
In the end, Larson came up just short in second, but his run combined with a solid performance the week before at Kansas leaves him encouraged. I was probably just a little too patient there, but I’m really proud of everybody on this team.
Larson did have contact with Carl Edwards, another one of the top cars, as they battled for second with 40 laps left in the race, leaving the Edwards vehicle in crumpled heap.
First he battled with Brad Keselowski, taking the lead from him in a spirited battle as well.
Matt Kenseth finally had things go his way.
NASCAR is already looking ahead to a new aero package for 2017, which may take even more downforce out of the cars, making them slip and slide around and the drivers work harder at the wheel.
“So I was just going to try and race him as hard as I could without getting into him to beat him”.
As NASCAR enters its All Star sort-of break, the Sprint Cup Series doesn’t have a championship-official race again for two weeks. On Sunday, he drove like one. Edwards, when told of the remark, brushed off the incident as hard racing after initially being upset about it. “We got a lot of points to make up if we don’t win a race before the Chase starts”.
“He was all over me”, Kenseth said. Until you go get it done, it really is irrelevant. “I respect Matt Kenseth a lot”. Feel like I do a good job of that.
“In my career, I’ve never had a transmission do that to me”, Johnson said.
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Despite giving Larson all he had, Elliott didn’t quite have the same amount of urgency. He made a few, but it’s just so hard to pass somebody on the bottom because they can suck down on your door on exit and slow you down. It’s another reason why the race’s fantastic finish got a boost from a host of good cars getting taken out. “I would have had to get into him (to get by) and I didn’t want to do that. He’s a really, really clean, hard racer, and a fast learner”.
