As the defending Champion, Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson is eligible to vote for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Larson was supposed to take his pick when the voting panel convened Wednesday afternoon in uptown Charlotte. It was to select the three candidates for the Hall’s Class of 2023. Along with him, HMS teammate Chase Elliott because he couldn’t vote last year due to the pandemic.
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NASCAR even published an article about Larson and Elliott’s opinion about casting the vote, where Larson said:
“Chase and I are both on it this year, so maybe get to bounce some notes off of each other, but either way, it’s just a cool honor and something that I look forward to,” Larson admitted. “I mean, there’s a lot of people I feel like I don’t even know about, so for me, I’ll do a lot of studying and it’d be cool to be a fan and trying to learn about some of the people’s histories and what they’ve done on the race track as well as off the race track that maybe deserves the right to get into the Hall of Fame.”
However, he was not in attendance. And the reason was not clear until it was revealed that Larson was supposed to have another honor.
A trip today to Arlington National Cemetery for Kyle to lay a wreath at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was scheduled last June. We made NASCAR aware of the conflict as soon as we heard the date of today’s voting. https://t.co/nxD1Wljv9U
— Jon Edwards (@JonEdwards24) May 4, 2022
Even when Larson’s plan was scheduled months in advance, it is a surprise that NASCAR published the article knowing that Larson wouldn’t be there to vote. Elliott was also not present, but the reason for his absence is still unknown.