While he wasn’t able to secure the race win, Kyle Larson scored his third straight pole of the season last week at Texas Motor Speedway. Denny Hamlin, his NASCAR frenemy, knows just how difficult it is to accomplish.
Winning a pole award is major. With how stage racing works and the difficulty passing at most tracks in the Next Gen car, it almost guarantees you will score solid stage points, if not win the stage.
On the latest episode of Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin talked about Kyle Larson’s qualifying speed. It is a big deal to win three in a row and give your team great track position and a great stall on pit road.
“Yeah and on three different tracks, right?” Hamlin said of Larson’s accomplishment. “He’s doing it on different tracks for sure, and it’s such an advantage to do that. So, man, it’s hard to do. It’s hard to win one pole much less three in a row, but when you do it you put yourself in a great spot for your guys on pit road. You usually end up with the first-stage win. Whoever gets the pole wins the first stage because the passing is so difficult as we saw at Texas, especially early in the race. So, it’s a real positive thing, for sure.”
These NASCAR drivers know if they start up front, a stage win is a real possibility. That means a playoff point.
“I’m sure there’s some sort of correlation with the first-stage winner,” Hamlin continued. “Now, you get some cautions so if you get mixed strategy that can really mess things up, but if the first stage can go without pit stops, yeah, usually the winner of the first stage probably comes out of the first two rows of qualifying.”
Kyle Larson is very talented, and his Hendrick team brings fast cars. We have seen races where Larson starts up front and dominates. At Texas, it looked like it would be one of those days. However, that loose wheel under caution sank his day.
Going to Talladega, a track Larson has trouble at, can he make it four in a row? The Fords proved to be the fastest at Daytona and Atlanta. While they haven’t finished races well, the Dark Horse body has been quick on the superspeedways.
Kyle Larson doesn’t enjoy drafting races all that much. Then again, why would he? Last year at Talladega he was involved in a violent wreck with Ryan Preece that led to safety changes from NASCAR. This year, let’s hope we don’t have any car-changing incidents.
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