HAMPTON, Ga. - Kyle Larson came oh so close to his first drafting track win on Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
But his consolation prizes came in the forms of a top-five finish, a stage win and a much-needed, solid points day.
Larson won stage two, took an overtime restart in the lead and wound up third as a caution flag flew on the final lap of an overtime restart. The driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet was three wide with race-winner Christopher Bell and second-place Carson Hocevar when a crash broke out behind them. Timing and scoring left Larson two spots short.
"The restart, obviously (Bell) got to my right side but I don't know what I did wrong or right," Larson said. "Just didn't get the caution to come out late enough until I got the run back to the inside. Came up a little bit short but proud of the effort today by everybody on the HendrickCars.com Chevy and, yeah, finally finished at Atlanta and finally got to run up front."
The Hendrick Motorsports foursome quickly rose from their starting positions and were factors at the front nearly all race long. William Byron tallied eight points in the first stage and added seven more in stage two. Larson found himself at the front of the field on the last lap of stage two and held the field off for a pivotal stage win to score 10 points and a playoff point to boot. Alex Bowman led laps in the second stage as well, adding six tallies to his season points total with a fifth-place showing. Finally, Chase Elliott scored six points for finishing fifth in stage one.
However, the longer the race stretched on, the more chaos ensued. Elliott was caught up in a crash early in the third stage but rallied from down two laps to come home 20th. Bowman finished 26th and Byron 27th after also being collected in wrecks down the stretch.
The race featured 15 different leaders and a track-record 50 lead changes.
The Cup Series returns next week with a race at Circuit of the Americas.
Who won today's NASCAR race?
- Christopher Bell, No. 20
- Carson Hocevar, No. 77
- Kyle Larson, No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet
- Ryan Blaney, No. 12
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47
- Denny Hamlin, No. 11
- Kyle Busch, No. 8
- Ross Chastain, No. 1
- Bubba Wallace, No. 23
- John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42
- Zane Smith, No. 38
- Joey Logano, No. 22
- Michael McDowell, No. 71
- AJ Allmendinger, No. 16
- Todd Gilliland, No. 34
- Austin Dillon, No. 3
- Riley Herbst, No. 35
- Ryan Preece, No. 60
- Tyler Reddick, No. 45
- Chase Elliott, No. 9
- Chase Briscoe, No. 19
- B.J. McLeod, No. 78
- Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88
- Justin Haley, No. 7
- Josh Berry, No. 21
- Alex Bowman, No. 48 Ally Chevrolet
- William Byron, No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet
- Austin Cindric, No. 2
- Ty Dillon, No. 10
- Chris Buescher, No. 17
- Erik Jones, No. 43
- Ty Gibbs, No. 54
- Daniel Suarez, No. 99
- Noah Gragson, No. 4
- Cody Ware, No. 51
- Cole Custer, No. 41
- JJ Yeley, No. 44
- Corey LaJoie, No. 01
- Brad Keselowski, No. 6