Sunday’s race in Kansas produced the closest finish in NASCAR history with Kyle Larson edging past Chris Buescher by 0.001 seconds. None could’ve anticipated that the relatively calm race would have such an end until the scheduled 267 lap event went into overtime through a caution induced by Kyle Busch. Once overtime was declared, every line of strategy that was drawn up went out the window.
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Kansas saw 27 lead changes between 10 different drivers and 7 cautions within a 43 lap space. Notably, the race was caution free – except for stage breaks – until Lap 176. From there on, three cautions followed quickly and forced drivers to deploy different tactics. With Denny Hamlin playing a good fuel-saving game from the lead, the day appeared to be his for a while. And then, Busch spun in Lap 261.
On the subsequent overtime restart, Hamlin got off with the lead and Buescher tagged along on his outside. Larson took the inside lane behind Hamlin and dove past him with a splitting three-wide move. This ensured that the final moments of the race would be a battle between him and Buescher alone. He moved to the outside of the RFK Racing driver’s outside coming off Turn 4.
The drag race that followed to the start/finish line then is one for the storybooks. The two cars slammed against each other twice heading to the mark and Larson’s #5 Chevrolet Camaro just got ahead. The margin of victory was so close that RFK Racing was questioning the width of the finish line. From starting in fourth place to finishing as the winner, Larson secured his second win of the season.
What did Larson and Buescher have to say after their photo-finish in Kansas?
Buescher and Ford continue being winless in the 2024 Cup Series season. After his second runner-up finish this year, the #17 Ford Mustang driver said to racer.com, “It sucks to celebrate on the backstretch and then pull up to the front straightaway and be told no. I don’t know how everything transpired, honestly. Not right now. It sucks in a lot of ways. Second hurts a whole lot worse than third.”
For the race winner, however, the day ended too quickly for his liking. He touched upon how he was fading away towards the end of the final stage before Busch’s caution breathed life back into his chances. “That caution played out good for us. The restarts are wild as we talked about earlier, so just an awesome race. Wish we had more mile-and-a-half’s because that was so much fun,” he said.
