Kyle Larson was tabbed to drive three races at Homestead-Miami Speedway. However, he lost one of them, thus failing to replicate what two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch pulled off twice in his career.
The goal for Larson was to win the Truck Series race, the Xfinity Series race, and the Cup Series race, over the course of a single weekend. He won the Truck and Cup Series events at the 1.5-mile intermediate speedway but fell short of rewriting history due to a late-race push from Sam Mayer.
Mayer, driver of the No. 41 Mustang for Haas Factory Team, got behind Larson’s bumper on the overtime restart with seven laps to go. As a result, Larson lost the lead to Justin Allgaier, who then took home the checkered flag.
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Recalling the incident on Door Bumper Clear, Bubba Wallace’s spotter, Freddie Kraft, said (38:57) ,
“At the end of the day, I think Sam should have known better than just waylay at the back of Kyle, but I feel like the longer you wait at that restart zone you're asking for trouble.”
That being said, it was a solid weekend sweep for Hendrick Motorsports. Besides what Larson was able to achieve, his fellow HMS teammate Alex Bowman delivered his career-best finish of P3 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Furthermore, the top-three drivers in the driver standings currently are all from Hendrick Motorsports. Larson is second, trailing William Byron by 36 points while Bowman sits third with 205 points to his name.
Next up for the drivers is the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway. Last year during the playoffs, Byron, Larson, and Chase Elliott (also from Hendrick Motorsports) finished 1-2-3 at the half-mile racetrack. So there’s no debating the fact that Hendrick Motorsports is going to be a force to be reckoned with this coming weekend.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s star driver offers his take on the Kyle Larson-Sam Mayer controversy
On the latest episode of Actions Detrimental, JGR driver Denny Hamlin opened up on the Kyle Larson-Sam Mayer incident at Homestead. Like Freddie Kraft, Hamlin too thought that it was Mayer’s decision late in the race that kept Larson from bagging his 16th career Xfinity win.
Mayer was vocal about his mistake during a post-race interview with Dustin Long of NBC Sports.
“I haven’t mistimed a restart like that in a long time, and that’s why I’m so bummed out,” Mayer said. “I know that, for one, I ruined his race, because obviously he’s going for the sweep, and I took that away from him just by a silly mistake, and I was trying to get everything I could get.”
Hamlin wasn’t too critical of the Cup Series rookie. He said,
“Sometimes driver error is what makes restarts great, and driver error is what caused Kyle to not get the restart he needed. He was critical of Sam Mayer, but Sam, to give him credit, was critical of himself.”
Hamlin also mentioned that Mayer was the only one to challenge Kyle Larson that day. Otherwise, it would have been a smooth ride to the victory lane for the 2021 Cup Series champion.
