Kyle Larson “More Than Willing” to Play His Part in Hendrick Motorsports’ Playoff Mission

Heading into the final road course race of the regular season at Watkins Glen International, all eyes are on Chase Elliott and his teammate Alex Bowman. Both Hendrick Motorsports drivers are in a precarious position regarding their playoff chances. After remaining winless throughout the season, the race at the Glen and Daytona are their final chances for a playoff spot.

Meanwhile, the results from qualifying for this Sunday’s race do not speak kindly toward Elliott and Bowman, starting from the 15th and 18th positions respectively.

At the media briefing, teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron, who have comfortably slotted themselves within the playoffs, spoke on how they could help out their teammates to make it to the last 16.

Kyle Larson shares his thought on helping out Elliott and Bowman

At the driver’s press conference, Larson was asked how could he help his stricken teammates Elliott and Bowman both this weekend and the next at Daytona.

The 2021 Cup champion said, “You don’t know how the race is going to play out. But if there is room to help, I’m more than willing to do what I can to benefit their race without doing something egregious.”

“Like at Michigan, I felt like Alex and I worked really well together when we went to the back and I helped him kind of get going forward. He ended up crashing, Chase has been really fast this weekend.”

“I imagine he’s just going to dominate anyway and probably not need anybody’s help. I’d love for each of them to win one of these races coming up and get all four Hendrick cars in the playoffs.”

Meanwhile, Larson was not the only one to have similar thoughts about helping Elliott and Bowman. His teammate William Byron expressed a similar thought as well.

William Byron would “love to help them out” as well

When a similar question was posed to William Byron about helping his teammates at the Glen, he responded, “It just all comes down to, you know, X’s and O’s. Like what the lap time is… It really comes down to how fast your car is and how fast they are whoever you’re racing.”

“So yeah, I don’t I don’t know. I’d love to love to help them out when we can. But yeah, we just we got a fast car, so we’ll see.” 

In case Elliott isn’t able to win this Sunday, he will still have one last chance at Daytona International Speedway. But a loss at the Glen would almost decide his playoff fate altogether, considering the advantage he had was mostly on the road courses.

Regardless, any assistance from teammates who qualified ahead of Elliott and Bowman would be appreciated. Hopefully, if all goes well, HMS might have the chance to field all four cars in the playoffs.