By Matt Courson, Staff Writer
JOLIET, Il. — Kyle Larson finished runner-up Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway, marking his best finish of the 2019 season. For the second straight year, the California-native was a part of an incredible finish at the 1.5-mile Illinois speedway.
“I wish I could have got a win for McDonalds and got them to Victory Lane. But still a great day for Chevy and Hendrick engines. That was really cool to see a lot of us Hendrick engine guys up front and kind of drafting and breaking away from the groups behind us on the short runs.”
Larson chased down and passed eventual race winner Alex Bowman for the lead with just 8 laps remaining. Larson held the lead for 2 laps until Bowman swiped the lead back on lap 261 to go on and win the Camping World 400.
“Was actually surprised I even got to him. I thought when he came out about the same distance off pit road in front of me, I thought he was just going to check out.
“But like I said, he was struggling and we were able to get to him and get by hum, but he did a good job. He did a good job regrouping and figuring out how to make his car drive better and got the win.”
The driver of the No. 42 Chevrolet though that once he had Bowman in his rearview mirror he would get loose and fall back, but that was not the case.
“When I got by him, I’m like all right, good, he’s going to be in my dirty air and get loose. He could get big runs on me down the straightaways and I think that allowed him to get that run into [Turn] 1 and he got to the main side and I got tight.
” I don’t know if him getting air on my spoiler or something got him tight, but I had to kind of breathe it a little bit, and then we side drafted on the backstretch.”
Larson believes that he could have made different moves to hold off the Hendrick Motorsports driver of Bowman.
“I wish I would have maybe done some things different into 3 instead of going all the way to the wall, maybe chase him to the bottom, just try to hang on his quarter, but he might have cleared me anyways down there.”
Larson, who has not went to Victory Lane since September 2017, says the finish left him both discouraged and encouraged. “It’s obviously discouraging day,” Larson said. “I didn’t get a win, I got another second place finish here in Chicago. But I fought hard and I feel like I did a good job.”