Fresh from Indy 500 qualifying, Kyle Larson makes All-Star entrance at North Wilkesboro

 

WILKESBORO, NC (AP) – Kyle's impressive speed display on Sunday extended beyond his Indianapolis Motor Speedway qualifying run. Larson arrived for the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday night, weaving through a tight window of time after securing a starting spot in the second row for the Indianapolis 500 the following weekend.

In an attempt to defend his All-Star Race victory from the previous year, Larson, the points leader in the NASCAR Cup Series, put on his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and finished fourth on Sunday night. In order to give Larson's travel arrangements a little leeway, NASCAR officials pushed back the green flag timing by 16 minutes to 8:30 p.m. ET. Nevertheless, Larson arrived at the speedway grounds almost an hour ahead of schedule and arrived by plane with much time to spare.


Kevin Harvick, a past Cup winner, will drive the No. 5 Chevy in Friday's practice and Saturday's qualifying after coming out of retirement from the FOX Sports booth. Larson was not present for the All-Star Race preliminary round. After the team switched drivers, Larson started the All-Star Race in the back of the pack but quickly moved back up to catch up with the leaders.

With a new set of softer "option" tires, he temporarily moved up to third place in the last 50 laps of the main event, but his gains were lost in the closing laps.Larson stated after the race, "Yeah, I thought we were in great position there." "Moved swiftly to third; got to fourth quite fast. I reasoned that I could wait patiently. For a short period, I built incredibly loose, and after that, they began to slowly back away from me. After making a move up, I kind of held on. The guys that didn't pit were as strong as they seemed, which astonished me. I believed we would be in the best possible position to prevailChad Knaus, Hendrick Motorsports’ Vice President of Competition, said during a pre-race availability that had Larson not arrived in time, the No. 5 team would not have participated in the All-Star Race. The only driver who met the eligibility criteria for the invitational event and who was not already entered was Shane van Gisbergen, last year’s winner of the inaugural Chicago Street Race.

Knaus said that his team discussed a plan with NASCAR officials that could have potentially placed Xfinity Series regular Justin Allgaier in as a substitute, but that he would have to reach the main event by advancing from the All-Star Open qualifying race. That plan, Knaus said, was scuttled after running through the potential hurdles and hypotheticals.</ p>

“It’s going to sit there and look pretty. We’ll save it for another event,” Knaus said about the team potentially withdrawing if Larson did not arrive in time. “… The way things are working out, all of our cards are in getting Kyle here, and that’s the plan. To put Justin in and have him run the Open, we went down that road, we thought about it, we spoke with NASCAR, we came to a collective decision, that’s not the best route for all of us. We get pretty messy pretty quickly. Where is it fair? Is it fair to the people that are in the Open or not fair to the people in the All-Star. All of that stuff just gets kind of crazy, so better off just to make sure that our helicopters, our planes light off and we get him on the ground, and we get him on a golf cart and get him here.”

Larson dominated last year’s All-Star Race, leading 145 of the 200 laps as NASCAR’s top division returned to North Wilkesboro for the first time since 1996. Knaus, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, was the grand marshal for this year’s second All-Star edition at the 0.625-mile track..