By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Jimmie Johnson’s golden horseshoe found a new home on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
If you’ll recall, Kevin Harvick suggested that Johnson and his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team kept a horseshoe in their hindquarters after Johnson took advantage of an opportune caution to win at Fontana, Calif., in February of 2010.
You could argue that the horseshoe migrated to another Hendrick driver in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race, after Kyle Larson took advantage of serendipitous circumstances to claim his second title in NASCAR’s premier division.
On Lap 310 of a scheduled 312, Championship 4 driver Denny Hamlin held a comfortable lead over second-place William Byron and appeared destined to win the title that had eluded him for two decades.
Enter the horseshoe.
Byron, the only driver in the Champ 4 who hadn’t experienced tire issues to that point, blew a right rear and rocketed into the Turn 3 wall, causing the caution that flipped the championship in Larson’s direction.
After a second straight two-tire call, Larson lined up fifth, five spots ahead of Hamlin, who had taken four tires, for an overtime restart. Two laps later, Larson finished third to Hamlin’s sixth to claim the 15th championship for team owner Rick Hendrick.
Larson, whose winless streak reached 24 races, won the title without leading a lap in what was arguably the slowest car among the Championship 4, but it would be wrong to ascribe his championship to luck alone.
Larson made a courageous run near the fence in Turns 1 and 2 in overtime and built the momentum that kept him ahead of Hamlin, proving once again that, if given the opportunity, he will do whatever it takes to come out on top.
Hours after Ryan Blaney took the checkered flag to win his fourth race of the season, Larson was still in disbelief.
“Yeah, it’s insane,” he said. “I don’t know. I mean, did anybody in here think that we had a shot? Like, I definitely… like (crew chief) Cliff (Daniels) was saying, we weren’t dead, but we were pretty close.”
As a measure of how fortunate Larson realized he was, the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet expressed genuine empathy for Hamlin’s gut-wrenching disappointment.
“It’s great to celebrate and all that, but it does feel a little awkward, because he has put so much time and energy, has been so close to winning so many championships,” Larson said. “This is as close as he’s ever been.
“Sure, he’s a competitor, but he is a friend. I was going to be happy for him to win. That’s kind of what I was thinking about. Like, man, I can’t wait to go tell him, ‘Good job.’ Then the caution came out and the script flipped right there, so…”
There’s a saying that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Larson proved that thesis on Sunday. When the opportunity presented itself, he and his team were ready to seize it.
That wasn’t the first time Larson has been an opportunist. Four years ago, late in the Championship Race at Phoenix, Martin Truex Jr. was leading, with Hamlin in hot pursuit in a faster car.
Larson was running fourth among the championship drivers with little hope of overtaking the frontrunners. A caution on Lap 283 changed everything. With a sub-10-second pit stop in stall No. 1, Larson vaulted from fourth to first and led the final 28 laps to win his first championship.
Come to think of it, maybe the horseshoe has been there all along.
