Kyle Larson still feels NASCAR championship pressure despite comfortable lead for Homestead finale

A lap down and mired in heavy traffic outside the top 20 during Sunday’s NASCAR race at Martinsville Speedway, Kyle Larson glanced at a large infield video monitor.

A graphic on the screen indicated his comfortable Chase points lead was in danger of being chopped in half.

That sobering image lingered in Larson’s mind even after rallying for a ninth place that put him on a glide path entering the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he could become the first back-to-back Cup Series champion since Jimmie Johnson (who won five consecutive titles from 2006-10).

“It’s not locked up, so there’s still definitely pressure,” Larson said. “I don’t know if I should feel pressure, but I’m going to throughout the week. These races can get crazy. Something can happen that you don’t get to score the points you need.”

With a 67-point lead on Christopher Bell, Larson won’t need to do much at Homestead, and he has excelled at the 1.5-mile oval in South Florida with two victories in the past four races.

But racing well is accompanied by risk at Homestead, a track with a progressively banked surface that requires running inches from the wall — and sometimes brushing it — at nearly 200 mph to achieve maximum lap speeds.

Spurred on by a dirt racing background that emphasizes running the high lane, Larson has won at Homestead with heavy scrape marks on the right side of his No. 5 Chevrolet. He has dismissed the idea of racing conservatively to protect his Chase lead.

“The wall’s got more grip, and the wall’s where I’m comfortable,” he said. “So I’m sure I’ll be up there.”

A bobble could cause a crash or enough damage that opens the door to having the championship snatched away by Bell or Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin (the only other remaining title-eligible Chase driver at 70 points behind).

“It is a place where (Larson’s) been really good on the wall, and God forbid he scraped it a little too hard and cut a tire,” Hamlin said with a smile. “So you just never know. But the chance is very, very slim.”

Larson needs only nine points to clinch the title outright.

That could happen at Homestead as early as the 80th lap when the first stage ends, and NASCAR awards points to the top 10. Larson will have another points opportunity to clinch at the end of the second stage on the 165th of 267 laps.

Even if Larson falters, either Bell or Hamlin would need a big points total to catch him (the maximum for a race win is 76 points).

A 2023 winner at Homestead, Bell is optimistic of performing well but not necessarily of putting pressure on Larson.

“To be realistic about it, it’s another opportunity to win a race, and that’s what we have to do,” Bell said. “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Hamlin, a three-time winner at Homestead, said he’s confident of contending for a victory if his team can sort out its underperformance issues in the Chase. At Martinsville, he started on the pole and finished sixth without any stage points after a strategy blunder of staying on track to run long while most of the field pitted.

That ruined his hopes of cutting Larson’s lead under 50 points entering Homestead.

“It’s unrealistic, for sure,” Hamlin said of the bid to win his first championship after 21 seasons in Cup. “We’ll go there and do the dog-and-pony show and act like we can do it. But we just didn’t capitalize on the speed we had, and that’s been the story of our Chase. We certainly didn’t execute to the best of our ability.”

After entering the Chase as the top seed, Hamlin has an average finish of 11.22 and a best of third through nine races.

Larson is on the opposite trajectory with an average finish of 6.22 and three victories after a winless regular season.

He has only two finishes outside the top 15 in 12 starts at Homestead, which will return to the season finale after capping the schedule from 2002-19. The past six seasons concluded at Phoenix Raceway, where Larson ran poorly last month in a Chase-worst 34th that nearly cost him the points lead.

“I’m glad we’re not in Phoenix,” he said. “I’d look forward to (Homestead) if I was even 67 points behind. I just love Homestead. It’s a great venue for hosting the championship weekend. It should be a fun weekend.”

___

See AP’s full auto racing coverage here