Larson makes the most out of a difficult day in Nashville

Kyle Larson did it again at Nashville Superspeedway. No, it was not a foot-meets-throat performance that Larson and his Hendrick Motorsports team could put into action on any given Sunday. Nor was it winning the Cracker Barrel 400.

What it was instead was Larson being one of the stories of the night for the feat of overcoming a car that wanted to do everything but perform the way it needed. Larson and the No. 5 team could have been crowned comeback players of the race, if such an award existed, after starting 28th, falling outside the top 30, and having the hood up on pit road among other things.

But in the end, Larson finished eighth. This means he keeps his box score for Nashville looking better than how it came together.

“It was good,” Larson said of the team’s perseverance. “Every year we come to Nashville in Next Gen, it looks a lot like today where we suck and then somehow get a top 10. Then, on paper, it looks like we’re pretty good here, but we’re not. Gateway would be another track where we typically start off bad and then fight, fight, fight, and get a top 10. So, really, other than Nashville and Gateway, I feel like we’re pretty good everywhere. We’ve just got to get better at these tracks.

“Regardless, I’m happy to recover and rebound. It’s days like this that show the strength of your team, so I’m happy we were able to keep our heads in it: myself, Cliff [Daniels], the team, the pit crew, everybody, and get away with a top 10.”

A 28th-place qualifying effort was the worst for Larason in a Cup Series starting field since March of 2019 at Phoenix Raceway. It was three laps into the race when things started to go sideways, literally, when he got loose in Turn 1 and fell to 35th position.

At the end of the first stage, Larson gave Daniels, his crew chief, a lengthy rundown of the attitude of his Chevrolet, which reminded him of what the team had battled in practice. In describing how unbalanced it felt, Larson said it was loose in the corners, tight in the center, and loose off the corners. There was no rear grip. If he tried to push his luck, Larson felt like he was going to crash.

In other words, “I just don’t feel comfortable at all,” Larson said.

Daniels and the team went to work, telling the driver they were going to do quite a bit under the stage break. Taking two pit stops to do so, the team worked on wedge, the trackbar, and even the front suspension.

In the second stage, Larson was nearly collected in a multi-car crash with Alex Bowman and Noah Gragson in Turn 3. Bowman lost control entering the corner and slid up into Gragson to start the incident, with Larson slowing down within inches of running into Gragson.

There was also the moment in the second stage when he had to come back down pit road to tighten a wheel. Larson was back inside the top 10, which would be for good, on lap 199 of 300.

“It was a bit wild,” Larson said. “I don’t know if TV was probably able to catch everything that went on with my day. But we struggled with our balance and then had some things happen along the way, and got a lot of luck along the way, too.

“So, it was unfortunate to not be as fast and have the balance that we wanted, but once we kind of just gave up on trying to fix it all and just focused on gaining track position, we had some good restarts and then settled in and would have another good restart and settle in. Yeah, it was good to recover to the top 10 but we would like to be better here.”

In five starts at Nashville, Larson has one victory (2021) along with finishes of fourth, fifth, eighth, and eighth again in the four races in the Next Gen era.