With the prestigious double-duty in his schedule, one would expect HMS ace Kyle Larson to do things differently; perhaps to focus a little bit more on the Indy 500. After all, it’s been almost a decade since someone even attempted the feat, let alone completing all 1100 miles of it. So what is Larson’s plan?
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Strangely enough, everyone seems to be asking the veteran racer this same question every week. However, his answer remains the same: nothing is going to be different. Will that hurt him when the big day comes? Maybe; maybe not. But Larson feels like he is ready.
“I feel like to this point, I’m as prepared as I can be,” Larson said as per Speedway Digest. “I’m just to the point now where I need to get on track. We get on track in a few weeks, and then I’ll get to be able to think more about the Indy 500.”
Clearly, he is not ready to sacrifice even an iota of his attention towards his job in the Cup Series for this year’s Indy 500. “It’s not like this stuff comes easy to me. It takes a lot of work, so I also have to dedicate a lot of time to this if I want to be doing my team justice on Sundays, as well. I race a lot of stuff and I prepare the same for all of it, so Indy is no different,” he added.
Kyle Larson kick-starts the weekend at COTA with a win
On Saturday’s Featured Health 250 Xfinity Series race, Kyle Larson led just one lap. And that one lap was the most important one as that got him a cheeky victory over Shane Van Gisbergen and Austin Hill by a narrow margin of 1.215 seconds. What makes his triumph even more impressive is that he was the only one among the race leaders to commit to the pit lane on the final caution. It was the right strategy at the right time for the #17 team, for sure.
“Today I was definitely not the fastest, but we were patient,” said the Elk Grove native as per Autosport. “I knew the 21 (Hill) had shoved SVG through one and if he got to him it could get dicey. I was just trying to be patient. I was thinking when to make my move and when I saw him shoving him through 15 and 16, I thought this could get good and thankfully I cleared them off in that corner.”
However, neither Gisbergen nor Hill was happy with how their cars got entangled in the mess on the final lap. Nevertheless, Gisbergen was happy about how fast his car was and with that, he also acknowledged how ingenious Larson’s last-minute move was.
