Both of NASCAR’s most consequential regular season points battles took a big swing with five laps left in Stage 2 of Monday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
Kyle Larson, who entered the race with the regular season points lead, was racing inside of the top 10 on one of the race’s many chaotic restarts when he got loose in the middle lane and spun.
Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Chevrolet backed into the outside wall in the direct path of Bubba Wallace, who clattered into the Californian and sustained significant front-end damage to his No. 23 23XI Toyota. At the same time, a stack-up behind Larson led to more crashes that included Chris Buescher, Joey Logano, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe and Todd Gilliland.
The crash knocked Logano, Larson, Bell and Gilliland out of the race. Buescher, Wallace and Briscoe continued on, but saw the rest of their runs hampered by damage.
“Restarts are difficult here, with the side-drafts and all that,” Larson said after being cleared at the infield care center. “I was just trying to get all I could, try to funnel to the top. I just moved up, got too close to whoever was outside of me and sucked myself around.
“Bummer. We had an extremely fast car. I hate that I screwed that up for our team, as well as the others that got collected in it.”
Monday’s crash was critical to both the regular season championship and playoff bubble. Larson had just a five-point advantage on Tyler Reddick for the points lead heading into the race, with Chase Elliott one point behind Reddick in third.