DARLINGTON, S.C. — For much of the night, it seemed as though Kyle Larson was well on his way to a second consecutive Southern 500 victory as he put in a dominant performance at Darlington Raceway.
In those same moments, an ill-feeling Tyler Reddick began to fade through the latter part of the top-10, and the regular season championship seemed to be in Larson’s lap after sweeping the stages on the night.
Unfortunately for the 2021 Cup Series champion, neither came to fruition.
Larson started fourth and grabbed the lead on lap 46 through a cycle of green-flag pit stops. From there, the No. 5 set sail. From lap 46 to 338, Larson led a whopping 263 of 292 laps, never once losing the lead outright on the racetrack.
However, a frenzy of cautions late led to a plethora of differing strategies, mostly from drivers needing to win to make the playoffs.
Larson lost the lead on pit road and fell back on the lap 342 restart exchange that saw Chase Briscoe take Larson and Ross Chastain three wide. Larson was never able to recover from there.
Briscoe seemed to have the only car that could hang with Larson all night long, lurking in the background of Larson’s dominating run nearly from start to finish. In the end, Briscoe made the right moves and stole the Southern 500 out from under Larson and the No. 5 team.
In that same moment, the backslide for Larson and solid restarts for Reddick allowed the driver of the No. 45 Toyota to gain just enough points to barely sneak out the regular season title with the smallest margin possible: just a single point.
When digesting his night, Larson seemed content with the result, highlighting the speed the team brought and the restart at the end as just a racing deal.
“I don’t necessarily think we did anything wrong,” Larson said. “It’s just kind of racing. You know when Ross stayed out it kind of got us a little bit off our gameplan. I chose the bottom, the front row, and Ross just got a good launch and he got clear down in front of me and kind of pinched my air off through [turns] 1 and 2. The No. 54 was able to hang on my right side and I just was stalled out on the backstretch. Briscoe did a great job and cleared all of us.”
Larson went on to congratulate Briscoe and the No. 14 team, highlighting the speed Briscoe had all night and stating how cool it was to see that team go to victory lane….
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