Kyle Larson outruns veterans for Nationwide win at Charlotte
May 24, 2014
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
CONCORD,
N.C.—Once Kyle Larson made a breathtaking pass for the lead just past
the midpoint of Saturday’s History 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at
Charlotte Motor Speedway,
the outome was all but decided.
Larson
led the last 56 laps and 82 of the last 83 to win for the first time at
Charlotte, the second time this season and the second time in 43 starts
in the series.
Larson
passed Brad Keselowski in traffic on Lap 118 of 200 and stayed out front
the rest of the way, save for one circuit during a cycle of green-flag
pit stops that ran from
Lap 140 through Lap 144. Ultimately, Keselowski finished second after a
heated late-race battle against polesitter Kyle Busch for that
position.
“It was
about perfect for us,” Larson said of his afternoon at the track. “It
was nice looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing them get smaller and
smaller each lap. It’s
not very often that you see the 22 (Keselowski) and the 54 (Busch) get
smaller in your mirror.
“So it
just shows how great of a car we had. The pit crew did an awesome job
every stop we had. We had a great green-flag stop, too, so hats off to
everyone on the team for
making this win possible.”
Busch
held third, followed by Kevin Harvick and Brian Scott. Matt Kenseth,
Regan Smith, Trevor Bayne, Chris Buescher and Ty Dillon completed the
top 10.
With
Chase Elliott running over debris and hitting the wall on Lap 87,
leading to a 37th-place result, Smith took over the series lead by five
points over Elliott Sadler, who
came home 12th, the last driver on the lead lap.
Elliott dropped to third in the standings, 28 points behind his JR Motorsports teammate.
“Kyle
and I had a great race—Kyle Busch,” Keselowski said. “Kyle Larson was
just gone. He was pretty fast, just little bit better than us both in
the corners and the straights…
We need a little bit more, but we we’re running good, we’ve got a lot
to be proud of, and we’ll move on.”
Busch fought a loose handling condition for most of the race and summed up his run succinctly.
“I was
wrecking loose all day—just trying to hang on,“ said Busch, whose car
was transported back to the Joe Gibbs Racing shop for repairs after
hitting the wall in Thursday’s
practice. “I was lucky to finish.”
In
heavy traffic, Larson whipped past Keselowski on Lap 118, holding his
No. 42 Chevrolet wide open in spectacular fashion through Turns 3 and 4
as Keselowski's Ford was blocked
by lapped cars in the lower lanes.
“I
thought, if I could catch Brad in a bad spot in traffic, I could use it
(the high line) to my advantage, and that’s kind of what happened,”
Larson said. “I saw a lot of
lapped traffic ahead of us, and he had yet to try the top, or as high
as I was going.
“He got
kind of hung up behind them, and I had a clear lane up above. It may
not have looked that clear on TV, but there was quite a bit of room up
there for me. It was a pretty
awesome move… That was kind of the move of the race.”
With
Keselowski saving fuel during the latter stages of the long green-flag
run, Larson opened an advantage of nearly four seconds, but Keselowski
whittled three seconds off
the margin by pitting under green on Lap 141, two laps earlier than
Larson.
On
fresh tires, Larson stretched his lead back to more than two seconds
before NASCAR called a caution on Lap 169 for debris in Turn 3. All
lead-lap cars came to pit road for
four tires on Lap 171, with Larson retaining the top spot, trailed by
Harvick (who gained one position), Keselowski and Busch (who picked up
two spots on the exchange of pit stops).
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