Kyle Larson thinks it’s important to kick off Round 2 of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs in a positive way.
Larson has advanced to the second round but just barely after surviving last week’s crash-filled Bank of America Roval 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He did so thanks to a tiebreaker and a second-place finish at Las Vegas to start the postseason.
Now as the second stage is set to start in Sunday’s Gander Outdoors 400 at Dover International Speedway Larson says it’s equally important to get out of the gate fast. He will start 10th Sunday after rain washed out qualifying.
“You want to have as good of a start to the Round of 12 as you can here at Dover to help ease your mind a little bit going into Talladega,” Larson explained. “Obviously, a win would be great, so you don’t have to worry about that place, but yeah, I mean I feel like our strategy in the past, I look at last year, we had a lot of playoff points so we could kind of play it easy a little bit last year. “
Larson did have a margin built up last year and needed it after the challenges of racing at Talladega Superspeedway. He is not so fortunate in 2018 and has only accumulated six Playoff points and is 10thon the grid.
“We were able to have a shot to win and then got in a crash there last, but there were so many cars that had crashed that we finished 12th I think and left Talladega with a decent amount of points,” Larson remembered. “But, then we blew-up at Kansas and it didn’t matter.
“But, now we don’t have a whole lot of playoff points, so, I feel like depending on how this weekend goes, we will have to probably go out there and try and gain some stage points and get a good finish and cross our fingers that we don’t get caught up in a wreck.”
It is a new year and the luck factor will again play a part in determining at least some of the outcome in the title race. Last week Larson was fortunate despite getting caught up in the day’s multi-car accident that severely damaged his car he was able to finish the race and move on. Is it a sign his luck may be turning around?
“We will see,” Larson said. “I mean, I had much more good luck last week than I had bad luck, but I still did have bad luck. I feel like being in another position to win a race with the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) car probably not being able to make it on fuel and we were going to be fine on fuel. So, I was just kind of riding behind him and then we had the caution.
“I feel like I had my typical bad luck then and then I guess you can call it bad luck, I mean I kind of screwed up on that restart, but then yeah, we had a ton of good luck. Maybe this year is a little different. We’ll see.”
