By Neha Dwivedi, Staff Writer<\/p>\n
It was Denny Hamlin\u2019s season but Kyle Larson\u2019s day to seize at Phoenix Raceway. After months of near-perfection from the Joe Gibbs Racing star, fate twisted its knife in the final laps, turning a near-certain championship into heartbreak.<\/p>\n
Kyle Larson, who hadn\u2019t won since Kansas in May and didn\u2019t lead a single lap of the season finale, found himself in the right place at the right time, capitalizing on chaos and bagging his second NASCAR Cup Series title.<\/p>\n
All weekend, the warning signs about tires were there. Tire trouble plagued the field from practice through the finale, and by race day, the rubber roulette reached its boiling point. For Hamlin, who entered Phoenix riding the momentum of his Las Vegas win three weeks prior, it all happened in the blink of an eye. A late caution, a big gamble on pit strategy, and one fateful call from the No. 11 pit box tilted the balance toward Larson, who turned the opportunity into gold.<\/p>\n
Larson crossed the line third in Sunday\u2019s thriller, behind race-winner Ryan Blaney and runner-up Brad Keselowski, but the bigger prize was his. While Blaney earned his fourth win of the season after a two-lap shootout, it was Larson who left Arizona with the Bill France Cup, capping a season.<\/p>\n
Hamlin had dominated much of the 312-lap contest, his #11 Toyota Camry slicing through traffic. But with three laps to go, the race took a turn. Running eighth, Larson clawed back from seventeenth as teammate William Byron\u2019s right-front tire exploded in Turn 3, slamming the wall and triggering the late caution that flipped the championship trajectory.<\/p>\n
Then on pit road, Hamlin and his crew tried to play it safe with four fresh Goodyears, while Larson\u2019s team rolled the dice with just two. The difference was monumental as the #5 driver restarted ahead, clung to the high line for clean air, and held off Hamlin\u2019s charge to secure the title, as the No. 11 faded to sixth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I was going to line up on the front row with Ryan,\u201d Larson said. \u201cThis is going to be good. He can choose the bottom. I know what to expect into one with grip \u2026 My hope was that Denny was not going to get a great one and two. I thought with four fresh tires, he might get through there well. We might be side by side. I thought that\u2019s how it would net out off of two. I got a better one and two than I expected. Then yeah, for a bit I thought I was going to win. They were going kind of crazy on the radio; my spotter was telling me that the 11 was kind of jammed up back there. I was going to be committed to the outside lane. I felt like that was going to be my best opportunity to find clean air, maintain momentum. Yeah, was just trying not to crash there at the end\u2026 I was trying what I could to win the race. But yeah, we did what we had to do to win the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Larson didn\u2019t mince words about Hamlin\u2019s speed either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 11 was by far the best car,\u201d Larson said. \u201cI thought him and the 12 were really good. Out of the four of us the #11 I thought was the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the Hendrick Motorsports driver credited his crew chief, Cliff Daniels, for keeping the ship steady when the seas grew rough. He praised Daniels\u2019 leadership and composure, calling it the backbone of their success as it kept the whole #5 team motivated, always having a plan.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret in the garage that Larson and Hamlin are close friends. And the fact that Larson beat out his buddy for the title due to a caution and a pit call, was not lost on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s definitely a large piece of me that feels really bad and sad,\u201d Larson told members of the media. \u201cBut at the same point, I\u2019m happy. It\u2019s such a weird feeling. When you don\u2019t win the race, you don\u2019t lead a lap, you win the championship, you steal it from a guy who has tried for so long and had it in his fingertips, it\u2019s a really weird feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, it was two, two-tire calls that even put Larson in the position to take home the championship. Had Daniels given him four tires on either stop, the trophy would likely have gone home with Hamlin.<\/p>\n
For Hamlin, the race was another cruel chapter in a story that keeps writing itself in heartbreak. On the final pit stop, he came out 10th after taking four tires with just two laps left in the race. A different call might have made the difference. Could he have held off Larson staying out and holding point or would a two-tire strategy have been enough?<\/p>\n
The result was a gut punch for Hamlin, who took quite some time before climbing from his racecar on pit road and into the arms of his fianc\u00e9e Jordan Fish. Through their embrace, fans could see Denny and Jordan\u2019s tears as she told him she was sorry. It was a heartbreaking scene as his crew chief came up to console him before Hamlin went over to thank his pit crew. He was then met by his daughters, who were shattered that after such a dominant season, the NASCAR Cup Series Championship was yanked away from him by a caution in the closing laps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Neha Dwivedi, Staff Writer It was Denny Hamlin\u2019s season but Kyle Larson\u2019s day to seize at Phoenix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-266005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}