DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Four days removed from his dramatic second-place run to Kyle Busch at Chicagoland Speedway, Kyle Larson has already worked through the hypothetical do-overs. For good measure, he’s replayed and reviewed the finish multiple times.
The fender-banging conclusion to the Overton’s 400 was initiated by Larson’s stirring charge and slide-job attempt as his No. 42 Chevrolet drifted up in front of Busch’s No. 18 Toyota on the final lap. After their contact at the exit of Turn 2, Busch’s retribution came in the form of a front-bumper shove through the final set of corners, sending Larson into a long slide and taking the victory away.
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Asked if there was an opportunity to use a different tactic to ward Busch off, Larson said he wasn’t sure how the outcome would have changed.
“I’ve probably watched the last two laps at least 20 times … or more,” Larson said Thursday after opening Monster Energy Series practice at Daytona International Speedway. “I don’t know, I feel like off Turn 2, it worked out real well to get in front of him. I guess, I’d have liked to have (turns) 3 and 4 back to run in there a little further, but like even Kyle mentioned, he thought that I was going to do that to try and get away from him, and then he was going to stick the bottom to get underneath me.
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“I knew going down the backstretch that if I ran in there crazy hard to get away from him, the bumps in 3 and 4 would upset me and I’d have gotten really tight, and if he would’ve just nailed the bottom, he would’ve just drove by me off of 4.
“I didn’t want to do that, but if you have a second try at something, I guess now I’d like to at least try it and see if I could’ve stayed in front of him to keep him away from my back bumper. But yeah, I don’t know if it would’ve worked out or not.”
The two drivers acknowledged each other with several displays of mutual respect, including Larson’s thumbs-up on the cool-down lap and a congratulatory discussion in Victory Lane afterward.
Larson said he’d also had a chance to catch up on the social-media reaction to the last-lap battle, especially the positive mojo that’s come his way.
“Yeah, I’ve read a little bit of it. I would say it was all good in my direction,” Larson said. “I think there’s still a lot of people who really don’t like Kyle Busch that have some things to say about him. I don’t know, it’s been cool to see and nice to see the support and see the passion of a lot of race fans.”