Kyle Larson did more harm than good during the Xfinity Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday. The Hendrick Motorsports driver was making a cameo appearance for his team in the No. 17 car and wrecked JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier following a late restart. Allgaier’s teammate, Connor Zilisch, perhaps had the best view of the incident.
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The 19-year-old driver was in third place when Larson and Allgaier were racing right in front of him. On the restart, Allgaier opted for the outside line, and Larson joined alongside on the front row. Larson abruptly got loose in Turn 2 and clipped Allgaier. The contact sent Allgaier’s car into the wall and ended his day altogether. Larson, though, was able to continue and finished fourth.
Zilisch ended up as the race winner and collected JR Motorsports’ 100th Xfinity victory. In his post-race presser, he was asked to comment on the accident between Larson and Allgaier.
He said, “Kyle doesn’t race these cars every week. So, when someone puts it on your door in a Cup [Series] car, the guy on the outside gets tight. And when you get someone to put their car on your door in the Xfinity [Series] car, the guy on the inside is suspect to spinning out. And when you don’t race every week, you kind of just build habits.”
Zilisch continued to talk about what each driver could have done differently to avoid the mishap and expressed regret at how their race ended. Allgaier alone has 25 wins for JR Motorsports and getting the team’s 100th victory would have been a remarkable and fitting achievement for him. Sadly, the stars just didn’t align for him.
For his part, Larson admitted the mistake that he made and apologized to Allgaier and his team for becoming a hurdle to what should have been a far better day for them.
He said, “You never want to do that to somebody racing full-time like that, so I wish I could have done some things differently. Honestly, I don’t really know what I could have done right there other than to maybe help my angle into (Turn) 2 a little bit. Again, sorry to Justin and the #7 team.”
The race marked only Larson’s fourth Xfinity Series start this year, and he’s already won two of them. Whether he’ll return for more before the season ends remains to be seen.
