Phoenix delivers Larson the punch his Cup Series rivals were hoping for

Phoenix Raceway finally delivered a punch that Kyle Larson’s championship rivals had been hoping for.

Larson and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team did not finish the race after a blown tire in Turn 1 with 30 laps to go. But his 34th-place finish came on a day when the team had already been struggling mightily with the handling of their Chevrolet. Much of the afternoon, Larson ran outside the top 20.

“Not a good one,” Larson summed up. “I was just trying to salvage anything in the top 20 would have been great. Then I just blew a right front, I guess, like a lot of people were. A bummer, but we just weren’t good. It happens.”

Crew chief Cliff Daniels told reporters at the track, as seen in videos posted on social media, that the team threw “so many things” at the car to try to make it better. Daniels kept waiting for a sign of life, but is not sure it ever got better.

Larson qualified 22nd after getting loose on his lap. The car struggling was clear right from the green flag.

“Today was a terrible day; our car was way off,” Daniels said via a video posted by The Athletic. “[We] don’t know why, because we had done a lot of work in the sim; Kyle, to his credit, was really invested in it, and we were, too, as a team. We thought we were solving for something correctly from where we’ve been here in the past, and obviously, it didn’t come together today.

“A disappointing day, but if you plot the average finishing position of the [No.] 5 team ever, it looks just like this. So, we’re OK, and we have a lot of strength, a lot of poise. We are not fearful of what’s ahead. We’re going to keep fighting hard.”

Daniels remains optimistic about the races ahead. Talladega Superspeedway is next, where Larson will arrive holding a five-point lead. Since taking the point lead after the third race of the Chase at Bristol Motor Speedway, the gap has shrunk for the first time.

Fortunately for Larson, his closest rival entering the day, Denny Hamlin, finished 28th after his own blown tire. Hamlin fell to fourth in points.

Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe are now on Larson’s heels. Bell is five points behind while Briscoe is 24. Although he fell to fourth, Hamlin gained points to get within 31 of Larson.

“I don’t know, just try to go there and forget about today and get back after it and do a good job,” said Larson of Talladega. “Which we’ve done well at the superspeedways, so hopefully we can just execute and score some points and just keep ourselves in the hunt.”

Larson’s average finish in the Chase fell to 7.28 after Sunday’s race.