Larson content as top two run ends at Charlotte

Kyle Larson was content with the day of work he and his Hendrick Motorsports team put in on Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Larson finished sixth, his worst finish in the Chase, but it was enough to extend his lead in the NASCAR Cup Series championship. Although he added only nine points to his total, Larson scored the third-most points on the day (49) and again outscored Denny Hamlin (40 points). He also led 97 laps.

“It’s our first finish outside the top five and only one spot out of the top five, so yeah, not bad,” said Larson. “I kind of lost the balance there at the end; I knew it was a really long run, and I just tried to take care of my tires early, and I got really loose.

“We’ll take the day.”

The day, the first fall oval race at Charlotte since 2017, played out as Larson needed it to on multiple fronts. Larson started from the pole and won a stage, while Hamlin did not score points in the first stage because of a pit road penalty. And, admittedly, Larson caught some breaks with the timing of cautions before he lost the lead.

It was more of the same in the second stage, or as Larson called it, promising. Again, he ended the stage in the points.

“Then a sixth-place finish,” he said. “All in all, I feel like we maximized it.”

Another plus for Larson’s day: Chase Briscoe won the race.

On one hand, the victory moved Briscoe to 65 points behind Larson after having started the weekend 84 back. But a Briscoe win was safer than Christopher Bell – who finished second by a few feet – winning the race. Had Bell won, banking 20 more points, Larson’s point lead would be 31 on him, not 49 on Hamlin.

A healthy gap, but Larson knows it is far from decided.

“No, I won’t feel comfortable until it’s over,” he said. “Briscoe winning and having a good day, you can take big chunks out if you win. So, we’re going to go to some tracks coming up where others are really good, and we have to keep putting in days like today.

“We weren’t the fastest, but we still got good points.”