Kyle Larson won the Knoxville Nationals in August(Photo: WoO Sprint Car Series)
Just over one month ago, Kyle Larson achieved one of his racing dreams by winning the 60th annual NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Sprint Car Nationals. On Thursday night, he returned to the scene of that monumental victory but in a very different type of racing machine.
The Knoxville Raceway this weekend is playing host to the Lucas Oil Late Model Nationals with Thursday and Friday night action providing preliminary action as a lead-in for Saturday’s $50,000-to-win main event. But because of his commitments to race in the NASCAR Playoffs at the Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night, the driver of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet on the NASCAR Cup Series was only able to compete on one of those three nights at the famed Iowa track.
Larson steered his K&L Rumley No. 6 Longhorn chassis to a third-place result on Thursday night finishing behind winner Tyler Erb and runner-up Jonathan Davenport. This completed a two-race week in that Dirt Late Model ride for the 29-year-old driver after he finished 6th on Monday evening in the Castrol FloRacing Night in America event at Fairbury(IL) Speedway.
The NASCAR Cup Series regular season champion felt as if Thursday’s race could have gone a bit better for him had things played out a little differently. In particular, Larson would have liked to see fewer caution flags during the 25-lap feature that paid $7,000-to-win.
“Maybe,” Larson replied in his MavTV Plus post-race interview when asked if more laps would have helped. “I was really good in the mid-portions of that. We started catching some lapped traffic then the caution came out. I needed it to stay green and we might have had a better shot.”
Please consider also reading “Tyler Erb fights off challenge for Thursday night triumph at Knoxville“
With relatively few Late Model starts under his belt, there are some aspects of driving at which he would like to improve in that type of car.
“I just struggle on restarts in these things,” the racer admitted. “It takes me a couple of laps to either get my momentum built up or some grip in the tires or whatever. I seem to struggle for a couple of laps then I get going okay. I just made too many mistakes against the cushion and it cost me some time.”
Kyle Larson finished third on Thursday in the K&L Rumley Longhorn Chassis car
In terms of only being able to race once this weekend at the track he loves so much, Larson was appreciative for the opportunity.
“I’m just happy I got to run at least one night. Thanks to Kevin Rumley for towing over here to race. It was cool to get to run something totally different here. The track was way different than what I’ve been on. The cushion was against the fence and I’ve never, usually when it gets that wide in a Sprint Car it starts to latch up and rubber. It was cool to run around here sideways and against the fence. It was a lot of fun. I had some lines working there that work for the Sprint Car but that kind of went away once the cautions started coming out. But I still had fun.”
Respond to this post on Twitter by following @RichardAllenIDR and @MichaelRMoats or by liking the InsideDirtRacing.com Facebook page.
Also, NASCAR and pavement racing fans can check out InsideCircleTrack.
