Kevin Harvick: 'Kyle Larson is willing to do what other people aren't'
The finish to this past Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway showed exactly why Kyle Larson is one of the best racecar drivers on the planet.
Restarting third during the overtime restart and positioned behind race-leader Denny Hamlin on the inside line, Larson dove to the bottom going into Turn 1, making it a three-wide battle between he, Hamlin and Chris Buescher for the lead. Buescher jumped out into the lead before Larson made up ground on the back straightaway on the final lap. Buescher left minimal room on the outside entering Turns 3 and 4, but that didn’t deter Larson. He forced his way next to Buescher, setting up a thrilling finish to the start/finish line.
Larson edged out Buescher by 0.001 seconds for the win in what is now the closest finish in the history of NASCAR. FOX Sports analyst Kevin Harvick, speaking on his “Happy Hour” podcast, complimented Larson for his late-race tactics and his aggressiveness in going for the win.
“When you have someone with the ability of Kyle Larson, and I think a lot of this really shows up on that last restart,” Harvick said. “He knew he had to go right after Denny Hamlin, and it wasn’t like hey, I’m gonna try this. It’s like, well if I’m not gonna go three-wide on the bottom, he’s gonna go three-wide in the middle, he’s gonna go anywhere that they’re not. He just has this incredible ability to pass and have a plan to execute it in ways that other people just don’t think about.
Kyle Larson’s aggressiveness pays off at Kansas
“That was a still pretty narrow gap, maybe there’s a lot of guys who push the limit on that narrow gap but when you go back and listen to his in-car and listen to him throttle back up to make sure he has that position on the outside of Buescher there, there’s just a lot of little things that happen right there that you just have to have an incredibly high racing IQ to execute. Kyle Larson is just willing to do things that other people aren’t. He’s not worried about making a mistake. If he would have crashed right there and spun out and finished as the last car on the lead lap, he would have been fine with it. Like, it’s not gonna affect him.
“That’s the thing that strikes me the most about Kyle Larson being different than everyone else. If he makes a mistake by going for it, it’s not gonna faze his confidence.”
The finish dethroned Ricky Craven’s two-thousandths of a second-margin victory over Kurt Busch in the 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington. Buescher initially thought he scored the victory, his team erupting into celebration on pit road. Upon further review, it was Larson by the narrowest of margins who crossed the checkered line first.