2014 Rookie of the Year finally gets a top-three finish
DOVER, Del. -- By the end of last season 2014 Rookie of the Year Kyle Larson had grown accustomed to and quite fond of reeling off top-five finishes. He had eight -- including three runner-up efforts.
But it took 12 races to score his first in 2015, that coming with a season best third place run in Sunday's FedEx 400 Benefiting Autism Speaks at Dover International Speedway.
Larson also qualified a season-best third and ran among the top 10 all afternoon, but it wasn’t until the waning laps that his No. 42 Target Chevy made a real push for the front in a quest for his first career Sprint Cup Series win – a victory people predict could happen at any time and any place.
Yet for all the expectations, until Sunday, the 22-year-old Larson hadn't scored a top 10 since early April at Bristol, Tenn. Six times in 11 starts this season (he missed the Martinsville, Va., race because of severe dehydration) Larson finished 20th or worse.
"Our first good run of the year,'' Larson acknowledged. "Hopefully this will kind of transition into some momentum for us, for our team, and we can start getting some more top-five and top-10 finishes."
He certainly had to work for this one. Although he lingered near the front, Larson truly put himself in the trophy mix -- improving positions on each of the race's final three restarts -- with less than 20 laps remaining.
"We were good for most of the race; we got off kind of midpoint of the race and got really tight,'' Larson said. "Then we freed up a lot and got better. Still weren't as good as we were in the beginning of the race there at the end, but I was able to line up in the right lines, it seemed like, those last three restarts and gain a couple spots each time.
"The inside row on that last one [restart] spun their tires really bad and got a bad start, so we were all able to roll around them and kind of cruise to a third place finish.''
The effort moved Larson up two positions in the championship standings to 20th. He is 72 points behind 16th-place Ryan Newman on the Chase grid.
It's the second time in three races that both Chip Ganassi Racing drivers – including his teammate Jamie McMurray – finished in the top-15.