Larson's 49-Point Lead Is Down to Five After His Phoenix Crash

Kyle Larson spent the week telling everyone his car would not be good at Phoenix, and for once the warning understated it. The points leader qualified 22nd on Saturday, fell a lap down on Sunday, and blew a right front tire with 31 laps left in the Freeway Insurance 500, finishing 34th and scoring three points. Tyler Reddick won the race, and a Chase lead that stood at 49 points on Sunday morning stands at five on Sunday night.

How did Larson’s day fall apart?

In stages, and he never really recovered from the first one. His championship rivals swept the top five starting spots in qualifying while Larson could manage only the 22nd fastest lap, NASCAR.com reports. He climbed five places in the opening laps, then a two tire gamble briefly put him inside the top five before he slipped back to 22nd by the end of Stage 1. In Stage 2 he fell a lap down and dropped to 28th, and only a caution on lap 157 and the wave-around put him back on the lead lap.

The end came on lap 281. Larson had pitted early in a green flag sequence and climbed to 16th before slipping back behind Austin Cindric, and then the right front tire failed as he braked for Turn 1. “I went to the brakes into [Turn] 1 and the right front was down,” he said from the infield care center, via NASCAR.com, “so couldn’t slow down and along for the ride.” The same race had already produced its first caution in Stage 1, when Riley Herbst dumped Michael McDowell in Turn 3 and wrecked himself doing it. Phoenix took cars in different ways all afternoon. It saved its most expensive one for the points leader.

Did he see it coming?

Mostly, yes, and that is the strange part of the story. Larson sounded the alarm throughout the week, NASCAR.com reports, repeatedly saying the one mile oval has not historically been one of his strongest tracks. The recent results argued with him: he arrived with three consecutive third place finishes at Phoenix and four straight top fives. The car argued louder. “I’m not surprised,” he told reporters, in FOX Sports’ account. “I think you guys thought I was lying to you all week when I said we weren’t good here. I didn’t expect to be good, but I didn’t expect to be that bad, either.”

His crew chief was blunter about the size of the miss. “We put as much effort into this race as we have for a Phoenix race, really, ever,” Cliff Daniels said, via NASCAR.com, noting Phoenix is normally the championship race. “Today was a terrible day. Our car was way off, don’t know why, because we had done a lot of work in the sim.” Daniels said the team threw change after change at the car during the race and never found a sign of life. Larson’s six race run to open the Chase, an average finish of 2.8, is now a seven race average of 7.3.

Why did the tire fail if the team had margin?

That is the detail Daniels kept coming back to. He said the No. 5 ran a full pound more air pressure in its tires than it did during last year’s Championship 4 race at Phoenix, a race where Larson also suffered a tire failure, and that the team believed it had margin in hand. “I thought we had margin in the tank there and obviously we didn’t,” he said. Goodyear’s tires failed on several cars on Sunday, and Larson himself shrugged it off outside the care center. “A lot of people were [blowing tires],” he said, in the Motorsport.com account carried by other outlets. “It’s just a bummer but we can still do it. It happens.”

The pressure detail matters because it closes the easy explanation. This was not a team gambling on low pressures for grip, at least by its crew chief’s account. It was a team that had already been bitten at this track, added what it thought was protection, and got bitten again. Larson and Bell have history with tire calls this season: at Charlotte, Christopher Bell fired back at Larson over a power steering claim, and the two now head into the last three races separated by five points instead of forty nine.

What does the standings picture look like now?

Compressed, top to bottom. Larson has 2,370 points and Bell 2,365, the Tennessean’s unofficial table records, with Chase Briscoe 24 back, Denny Hamlin 31 back, Ryan Blaney 40 back, Joey Logano 44 back and Reddick 56 back. All 15 of Larson’s fellow Chase drivers gained at least 12 points on him at Phoenix, NASCAR.com notes, and Reddick gained the most, 58, cutting a 114 point deficit by more than half with his first win since April. A race that started with nobody within 48 points of the lead, FOX Sports notes, ended with six drivers within 56.

Hamlin’s day is the reason the lead is five and not worse. He started Sunday as the closest pursuer, had a flat tire that put him a lap down as the caution timing worked against him, then sped entering pit road while concentrating on steering the car, FOX Sports reports, and finished 28th. Larson noted the same arithmetic from the other side. “I figured it would tighten up after today anyways, just based off history,” he said. “Obviously, I wanted to finish to get the points we could.” He also owes something to how the day’s earlier drama fell: Denny Hamlin said last week he would have defied a pit call had he known Larson was a lap down at Las Vegas, a reminder that these two have been racing each other’s bad days as much as each other all Chase.

What happens next?

Three races settle it: Talladega on Sunday, October 25, then Martinsville and Homestead. Talladega is the wildcard, a drafting race where Larson has never won and where a points lead can vanish in one multi car wreck that has nothing to do with pace. Daniels, for his part, refused the panic script. “We’re OK, and we have a lot of strength; we have a lot of poise. We are not fearful of what’s ahead,” he said, via NASCAR.com. “Three more races, we’re going to be strong, we’re going to be tough.”

The closing irony is the venue. Larson’s two Cup championships were both won at Phoenix, NASCAR.com notes, at the track that has now taken 44 points off his lead in one afternoon and left him defending five. The title he is chasing, his third, will be decided somewhere else this year. After Sunday, that may be the best news his team got all weekend, apart from the five points themselves. The rest of the Phoenix fallout is still landing: the photo finish at Charlotte between Briscoe and Bell a week earlier is what put Bell in position to inherit days like this one, and Bell now has three races to finish the job.