Kyle Larson, pictured ahead of the 67th DAYTONA 500, is hopeful ahead of Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta. (Photo: Donald Jenney | The Podium Finish)
HAMPTON, Ga. — Kyle Larson goes into each race weekend almost with the same vibes of a Panic! At the Disco song called “High Hopes.” When it comes to a superspeedway-style racetrack like Atlanta Motor Speedway, Larson tries to have those high hopes while shooting for the stars.
Before Atlanta’s reconfiguration ahead of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, he was competitive with two top fives and four top 10s in eight starts. Once Atlanta and the package for this venue changed akin to Daytona and Talladega, it has been a house of horrors for the 2021 Cup champion.
While running inside the top 10 in the 2022 spring race, Larson was collected in a crash on Lap 213, bowing out with a 30th place result. After qualifying third in the summer 2022 race, he was involved in an incident before salvaging a 13th place result.
Since then, Larson’s race days have been curtailed, all with his No. 5 car hooked to the wrecker with four consecutive Did Not Finishes (DNFs). Last summer, Larson took one of the hardest shots he endured in his Cup career with a mangled Chevrolet fit for Dale Earnhardt Jr‘s Racecar Graveyard.
Even after all of those hits, like a professional football quarterback, Larson is ready to return to the battlefield, relentless despite the nightmarish outcomes.
“I haven’t had much success on drafting-style tracks, but I really enjoy racing at [the recently reconfigured] Atlanta,” Larson said in a team press release. “It’s a lot different than racing at Daytona and Talladega, and I hope the No. 5 HendrickCars.com team can put together a complete race and grab a solid finish.”
Last Sunday evening, Larson, credited with starting 22nd, dropped to the rear of the field due to resorting to a backup car. In somewhat uncharacteristic fashion, the 32-year-old Elk Grove, Californian, native was never a contender in the 67th DAYTONA 500, getting collected in a late race crash that relegated him to place 20th.
Typically, drivers look forward to the second or third round knowing the ‘real racing season’ begins. Unlike prior years, Larson and his competitors do not compete on a ‘traditional’ stock car venue until the fourth race of the season hosted by Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, Mar. 9.
In other words, Larson likely will not know the pulse of his No. 5 team until the conclusion of the West Coast Swing.
“I don’t think so, because Daytona is Daytona, Atlanta is Atlanta,” Larson said in a video posted by Frontstretch. “We have a number of road courses on our schedule, so you’d like to go there and be competitive.
“As far as the bulk of our schedule, I don’t think you know how you are until you get to run Phoenix and Vegas, so that’s quite a while into the season, where before, you’d get through Daytona and be like, ‘Alright, now I can go see how we are.’ But now it’s like you have to wait a whole month, but I’m confident that Hendrick Motorsports will be strong.”
For now, Larson can try to chip away with his slow start by having a respectable result at Atlanta. One of the fundamentals toward having a solid outing at the 1.54-mile track is minimizing mistakes on the unique pit road configuration.
Kyle Larson qualified 17th for Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta. (Photo: Sydney Redden | The Podium Finish)
“I think pit road definitely gets messy here, just with how it is typically on the lead lap now,” he said. “And it’s just a bumpy, tight kind of pit road. Pit stall selection matters, but there’s never… unless you’re pit stall number one, but even that, if you ever come around somebody, it’s difficult
“So there’s never an easy in or out until somebody crashes, and hopefully whoever crashes, they’re stalling in front of you or behind you. You definitely want to have a better pit stall selection.”
Pit stall selection will not exactly be optimal as Larson and his team will pit in stall number 21, just before the stripe. Timing wise, that might be pivotal depending on a caution but he will pit between John Hunter Nemechek and Todd Gilliland.
More importantly, Larson responded to comments by Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon with how superspeedway-style racing can be a mental determent for the 29-time Cup race winner. Naturally, he justified his stance with racing at these venues.
“No I hadn’t talked to [Jeff] after the race at all. Sometimes, you have races that go that way. Sometimes, every decision you make isn’t the right one,” Larson shared during Saturday’s media scrum in a video posted by Peter Stratta of TSJ Sports. “And sometimes, you can’t miss. There’s different runs where I look at the first stage, the 12 didn’t do anything special.
“He literally stayed in one lane the whole time and he kept advancing and he ended up winning the stage. I was like, ‘OK, the next run, I’m going to stay in the lane.’ And it didn’t go anywhere.”
Like the Beach Boys sang in 1979, Larson just needs “Good Timin'” when it comes to positioning himself in the best spot for a win or strong result at Atlanta and her NASCAR-owned counterparts in Daytona and Talladega.
Case in point, Larson was ahead of William Byron, his teammate, before getting involved in the late-race crash that ended his night but served as a catalyst for the latter’s second consecutive DAYTONA 500 win.
“Sometimes, things work and sometimes they don’t. Even in William’s case, he got shuffled behind me before the crash on the backstretch that I got caught up in,” he added. “So it’s just a product of that style.
“Sometimes, you make every right decision. I’d say the last few years, even though I haven’t won or finished well, we’ve done well and made right decisions to get into the picture at the end of it. The 500 wasn’t one of those.”
Perhaps the Ambetter Health 400 will be one of those instances in which handling and patience serve Larson well before preparing for the West Coast Swing.
