Kevin Harvick reacts to Kyle Larson's 'dominant' win at Bristol

Prior to the action getting underway at Kansas Speedway over the weekend, Kevin Harvick had to heap some extra praise on Kyle Larson for his performance at Bristol Motor Speedway in the race prior.

Larson absolutely dominated the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, giving himself some much needed momentum with leading 400+ laps and winning the classic event. On the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Harvick reacted to the victory, and what it means for the No. 5 wheelman moving forward.

“Unreal,” Harvick said, regarding Larson’s victory at Bristol. “When you look at Bristol, we expect Kyle Larson to be good there. He loves driving the car hard. We had Kyle on the Victory Lap this week, and he talked about driving the car hard, and that’s why he loves Bristol so much, is you can just push the car so hard. I mean, he could ride the bottom of the race track like no one else could, and then he’d get a big lead. He was able to kind of just manage his pace, and then when he would get the traffic, he was just able to maneuver through the traffic like nobody else could.

“So, we expected him to be good. I don’t know that we expected him to do this good, but I think that it really shows the strength of the team in the things that they do to just go there and put a butt-whooping on everybody.”

While the racing at Bristol left a lot to be desired, Harvick and the rest of the NASCAR world have a ton of respect for what Larson was able to pull off. The Hendrick wheelman recorded a 7.1-second margin of victory last Saturday in what will go down as the third most dominant Bristol win of all-time.

With only four leaders, the 2024 Bass Pro Shops Night Race joined the 2023 Bristol Dirt and 2022 spring Martinsville as races with the fewest number of cars pacing the field in the Next Gen car era. 

Additionally, there were just eight lead changes throughout the race. Denny Hamlin took the checkered flag by just one second in March in a race featuring 54 lead changes. 

Following his dominating win at Bristol, Kyle Larson had a P26 run at Kansas on Sunday, so it wasn’t a great follow-up for the Hendrick wheelman. Still, he’s +18 heading into next weekend’s race at Talladega, with the Charlotte Roval to follow.