{"id":46212,"date":"2024-05-26T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=46212"},"modified":"2024-05-26T20:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T01:45:00","slug":"kyle-larson-finishes-18th-in-rain-delayed-indianapolis-500-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/26\/kyle-larson-finishes-18th-in-rain-delayed-indianapolis-500-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Larson finishes 18th in rain-delayed Indianapolis 500 debut"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Holly Cain<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

SPEEDWAY, Ind. \u2013 Only minutes after taking the Indianapolis 500 checkered flag, NASCAR champion Kyle Larson was on a helicopter heading from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday night \u2013 a quick maneuver to the next race and indicative of his quick Indy debut.<\/p>\n

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Kyle Larson. Photo by Paul Hurley<\/p><\/div>\n

Penske Racing\u2019s Josef Newgarden earned his second consecutive Indianapolis 500 win with Larson claiming an 18th-place finish in the No. 17 Arrow McLaren Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet \u2013 the ultimate position not a true reflection of Larson\u2019s race day, nor his experience at the speedway where he certainly made his presence known this month.<\/p>\n

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion was consistently among the fastest in practices and turned in a fifth-place qualifying effort \u2013 best among rookies and impressive even among veterans.<\/p>\n

He ran among the top-10 for much of the early laps on Sunday \u2013 wheel-to-wheel with IndyCar\u2019s best \u2013 even leading four laps late in the race. A slight miscue on pit road during a stop on Lap 130 ended up costing Larson. He was running fifth when he stopped but was penalized for speeding and dropped as far back as 22nd position before strategizing his way forward later in the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cProud to finish but pretty upset at myself,” Larson, 31, said of the pit road mistake. \u201cIf I could have executed a better race, you never know what could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

A four-hour rain delay Sunday at Indianapolis forced Larson\u2019s Hendrick Motorsports team to make a decision on the timing of his \u201cDouble Duty\u201d \u2013 originally an 1,100 mile effort equal to Indy\u2019s 500 miles and Charlotte\u2019s 600 miles.<\/p>\n

The decision to stay at Indy despite the starting delay was answered when team owner and NASCAR Hall of Famer Rick Hendrick posted a video on social media showing himself on the Indianapolis starting grid and saying simply, \u201cTime to go racing at Indy.”<\/p>\n

Hendrick and team executive Jeff Gordon were avid supporters of Larson\u2019s quest, even sending Larson\u2019s entire and enthusiastic No. 5 NASCAR Cup Series team to Indianapolis on Friday for the traditional \u201cCarburetion Day\u201d \u2013 final practice for the 500.<\/p>\n

Larson flew to Charlotte following Saturday\u2019s Public Drivers Meeting and 500 Festival Parade and practiced and qualified his NASCAR Cup Series car earning a 10th-place position on the Coke 600 grid. Xfinity Series veteran Justin Allgaier started the car and Larson planned to finish the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to come back next year, I feel like I learned a lot during the race,” Larson said Sunday before leaving Indianapolis. \u201cI made a couple mistakes early – one with the restart, not sure what I did there, and somehow got myself into third.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I did a really good job on the restarts and learned a lot. Definitely know what I need to do better for the balance when I come back. Then obviously I smoked the left front [tire] or something on a green flag stop. \u2026 It killed our opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026. Bummed at myself, but big thank you to Arrow McLaren, Hendrick Motorsports. \u2026 Everybody that\u2019s a part of this. We\u2019ll go hop on the jet and see if I can get into the 600 somehow.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain NASCAR Wire Service SPEEDWAY, Ind. \u2013 Only minutes after taking the Indianapolis 500 checkered flag, NASCAR champion Kyle Larson was on a helicopter heading from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday night \u2013 a quick maneuver to the next race and indicative of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":46215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[230,421,125,22,225,16,672],"class_list":["post-46212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indycar","category-nascar","tag-indianapolis-500","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-indy-500","tag-indycar","tag-kyle-larson","tag-nascar","tag-ntt-indycar-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Kyle-Larson-and-Graham-Rahal-Miller-Lite-Carb-Day-By_-Paul-Hurley_Large-Image-Without-Watermark_m106151-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-c1m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46216,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212\/revisions\/46216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}