Cole Custer Is The Teammate Everyone Wants

1. Everything had to go wrong for Kyle Larson to not make the Round of 8 … and it did

By his ridiculous 2021 championship standards, this hasn’t been the best season for Kyle Larson. After winning 10 times last year, he’s found his way to victory lane only twice, and he simply hasn’t been dominating races and leading laps the same way he did prior to the introduction of the Next Gen car.

Still, Larson entered this past weekend’s ROVAL race in great shape to make the Round of 8. He started the race in 18th, which wasn’t ideal, but he was in sixth place when the green flag dropped, 18 points ahead of ninth-place Chase Briscoe. Larson wasn’t safe by any means, but multiple things would have to go wrong for him to be eliminated.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.

While running 13th, Larson made a mistake not often seen from him on a road course that led to him smacking the wall in turn 7. The damage to his No. 5 Chevrolet was diagnosed as a broken right-rear toe link, and while repairs were made, he lost five laps in the process.

That was a bit of a disaster in a cutoff race, but even so, his elimination required a handful of other factors to become reality.

One of them happened days before the race, when William Byron (Larson’s own teammate), won his appeal of a NASCAR penalty and got 25 points back. If not for that, Larson would still have advances.

With Larson running 35th, he might still have been fine, as long as no one below him in points won the race. But that happened too, with Christopher Bell capturing a win he needed to have to make the next round.

There was more, too, but Zach Vortex summed it all up ever so nicely on Twitter.

For Larson to be eliminated:
-Bryon had to get his 25 points back
-A caution had to come out
-Bell had to win out of nowhere
-He had to be trapped laps down
-Custer had to manipulate the race for Briscoe

And all of those things happened. Perfect storm of misery.

— Zach Vortex (@Zach_Vortex) October 9, 2022

Drivers often complain about bad luck doing them in, but this is some next level stuff. There’s always next year.

2. Cole Custer drove his butt off to help his teammate advance but now may pay for it

If you’re old enough to remember NASCAR 06: Total Team Control, you probably remember that particular video game as a racing classic. It was also as ridiculous as it was awesome, because NASCAR races don’t work like they did in the game.

Except when they do!

Cole Custer sure…