Kyle Petty breaks down NASCAR Overtime restart battle between Kyle Larson, Chris Buescher at Kansas
Kyle Petty still hasn’t caught his breath after seeing the finish to Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway in which Kyle Larson edged out Chris Buescher by 0.001 seconds for the win.
Petty, speaking in a NASCAR.com video on Monday, broke down the final restart during overtime, detailing the moves Larson made to put himself in position to win. As Petty put it, there’s a reason why Larson is a Cup Series champion after all.
“We come down to that last restart,” Petty said. “Denny Hamlin has control of the race. Chris Buescher shows why he is a Cup driver and a potential and could be very soon Cup champion — he gets that start and he’s out there. Kyle Larson takes him three-wide — we know what Kyle Larson can do. He’s gonna go low, he’s gonna go high, he’s gonna make it happen. Last lap, he goes to the outside.
“Now, I want you to go back and look at that. There couldn’t be more than two inches between he and the wall and two inches between he and Chris Buescher. But he stuffs it in there. That’s why he has a championship trophy. He’s committed. He was committed all the way to the [checkered] line, and he won by that much. I’m telling you — so much strategy, so much racing — you had it all yesterday. I still haven’t caught my breath and I gotta go get on a motorcycle.”
Kyle Larson makes NASCAR history at Kansas
The finish was the closest in NASCAR history, dethroning 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.
“That was wild. I was obviously thankful for that caution. We were dying pretty bad,” Larson said after the race, via NBC Sports. “Was happy to come out third, and figured my best shot was me choose bottom and try and split three wide to the inside. Worked out my car turned well and was able to get some runs. Got through [Turns] 1 and 2 really good down the backstretch and had a big tow on Chris, and got him to kind of enter shallow, and I just committed really hard up top.
“Wasn’t quite sure if we were going to make it out the other side. I got super loose in the center, and then we’re just trying to — I’m trying not to get too far ahead of him to where he can side draft and then I was just trying to kill his run. It was crazy.”