The 2021 champion has found his way to victory lane.
Kyle Larson, who battled his Hendrick teammates as well as Joe Gibbs Racing throughout the race, lined up P1 with 21 laps to go and didn’t have to look back, winning the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway.
“It’s really cool,” Larson said on the Fox Sports 1 broadcast. “We’ve been close to winning a couple. William (Byron) has been extremely good this year. It was going to be probably between him, (Martin Truex Jr.) us, and (Christopher Bell) was really good. It all worked out.”
On the final restart, Larson just had to outrace his fill-in teammate in Josh Berry, who was spun out early in the race and used a strategy call to get up to the front.
The No. 9 pilot put the NAPA team on the podium in a career best Cup Series result.
“I have to give all of the credit to this NAPA team,” Berry said. “They made some great calls. When we had a clean track, we weren’t running bad lap times. I’m so glad we tried something to get us up front there.”
Larson’s race had momentarily gone array in the second stage when he made contact with Daniel Suarez on pit road.
The Elk Grove, Calif. native said that his team talked him back down before he drove away to the win.
“I got into the 99 on pit road there some time in the second stage,” Larson said. “We were awful after that. I was hoping the damage was the reason why. They had to calm me down a little bit and get refocused and we were able to get it done.”
The series will be back on track Sunday for the Food City Dirt Race at Bristol Motor Speedway. The action set to start at 6:00 p.m. CT on FOX.
NASCAR Cup Series Results
Toyota Owners 400
Richmond Raceway
Sun. April 2, 2023
1. Kyle Larson
2. Josh Berry
3. Ross Chastain
4. Christopher Bell
5. Kevin Harvick
6. Michael McDowell
7. Joey Logano
8. Alex Bowman
9. Ty Gibbs
10. Brad Keselowski
11. Martin Truex Jr
12. Chase Briscoe
13. Aric Almirola
14. Kyle Busch
15. Todd Gilliland
16. Tyler Reddick
17. Chandler Smith
18. Ryan Preece
19. Harrison Burton
20. Denny Hamlin
21. Corey LaJoie
22. Bubba Wallace
23. Daniel Suarez
24. William Byron
25. Austin Dillon
26. Ryan Blaney
27. AJ Allemendinger
28. Austin Cindric
29. Justin Haley
30. Chris Buescher
31. Erik Jones
32. Ty Dillon
33. Anthony Alfredo
34. Cody Ware
35. Ricky Stenhouse Jr
36. JJ Yeley
37. Noah Gragson
