Kyle Larson celebrates with crew members after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016.
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“This one’s different just because of how long we had to wait and how much harder I’ve had to work for it”.
Larson trailed Elliott when Michael Annett blew a tire on Lap 187.
Larson beat fellow rookie Chase Elliott to the finish line by a mere 1.479 seconds after leading 41 laps of the race, per Motorsport.com Once it was over, Larson burned up his tires in a spectacular steering-wheel-less burnout.
Now, Austin Dillon and Larson’s Chip Ganassi teammate, Jamie McMurray hold the final two spots with races held at Darlington (Sept. 4) and at Richmond (Sept. 10) before The Chase starts Sept. 18 at Chicagoland Speedway.
“I couldn’t quite catch my breath when I got out of the auto because I’d been pretty much screaming for two minutes”, Larson said after winning Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400, the first victory of his NASCAR Sprint Cup career.
Finally, almost 24 hours after the scheduled start, the Bristol Night-Turned-To-Day-Turned-To-Late-Afternoon-Early-Evening Race saw Kevin Harvick make the trip to Victory Lane, his second of the season.
Elliott, 20, son of iconic NASCAR driver Bill Elliott, finished second to Joey Logano at MIS in June when he muffed a gear change late in the race. “That’s a couple races in a row in just a few short months here at this place we had a really good auto, had an opportunity”, Elliott said. It’s one of those things wehre you do or you don’t, and I didn’t. “At the end, I gave Kyle a really good push”. The caution gave him another shot, though, and he took advantage.
“We really struggled badly most of the day”, Edwards said. Took me a few months to win when I got into USAC.
There were only four cautions in the 200-lap, 400-mile race. He returned to the race five laps down to the leaders.
Buescher leads David Ragan by seven points for the No. 30 spot.
Filling in for the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. Winless drivers now Chase eligible are Elliott (+27 points), Austin Dillon (+21 and pictured here) and Jamie McMurray (+15). If there are no new winners in the next two races and Chris Buescher falls out, there could be as many as four winless drivers who advance to NASCAR’s playoffs. On the other hand, he was not shy about valiantly dashing between lapped traffic while pursuing Elliott, four-wheel drifting up a lane in the process.
WHO’S HOT: Points leader Kevin Harvick followed up his win at Bristol with a fifth-place showing at MI.
It was the 99th career start for the 24-year-old Larson, who had 14 top-5 finishes before Sunday but hadn’t won at the Cup level. Kyle Busch had the dominant auto all day, leading 256 of the 500 laps, but a suspension part failure caused a spin and Justin Allgaier finished the job. Both of those drivers will still be racing for a win over the next two weekends but they will also be racing against Newman as he capable of making up that kind of point difference as well as taking his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet to victory lane.
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“From where we started our year to where our cars are now, we’ve made a lot of progress”, McMurray said.
