Kyle Larson said that he gave everything to win the race at Dover and has no regrets about finishing second in the race.
It was another story of Larson dominating most of the race and not being able to win it. He won both stages and looked like the prime candidate to win the race. However, after a caution in lap 100, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman took the lead off the pit road and went on to win the race.
“I honestly don’t know if there was anything I could have done differently to win the race after we came out second on pit road. I would choose the top (lane) behind him, get to second every time,” Larson said.
“Maybe I could have chosen the bottom on (the) restart, but I still don’t think I would have stayed with him until he was inside or anything like that. Probably would have fell back to third or so.
“I feel like we maximized our day. We were all so equal. I think any of the four of us could have been out in the lead. That person probably would have won.”
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While Larson led the most laps (263 of 400) but after Bowman led the race on pit road, Larson could not get ahead of his teammate any time in the race. The HMS No. 5 driver said that he is not disappointed with the result even though he had a very good race.
“At that point I didn’t really care it was a teammate in front of me or not. I wasn’t going to push him any harder than I was there because I already had him pretty sideways,” Larson said. “Same would have went for anybody else.
“I’m not going to try and wreck anybody.”
In the end, Larson was part of HMS’s first 1-2-3-4 finish in the history of the organization. HMS is also one win away from tying the record for most wins by an organization in NASCAR history (Petty Enterprises has 268).
“Winning the two stages, getting those couple points for the playoffs is obviously really important. Obviously, we would have wanted five more with the win, but we’ll take what we can get and keep stacking them up as often as we can.
“I’m not disappointed or upset about this second because I feel like there wasn’t anything else I could do.”
Larson already has one victory in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season and he could easily have had more. But the way he is performing, it seems that he will finish the regular season with another victory.