Oh boy, when you’re racing your teammate late in an event for the race win, the thing you absolutely don’t want to do is initiate contact for the lead. That’s exactly what Kyle Larson did to his teammate Chase Elliott on a restart with five laps to go in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International.
As the Hendrick Motorsports duo, which ran 1-2 at the time, reached turn 1, Larson locked up the brakes on his No. 5 Chevrolet Camaro, which sent him into Elliott’s No. 9 car.
The contact sent Elliott out of the groove, and dropped him like a rock to fourth-place, while Larson would go on to win by nearly a second over AJ Allmendinger.
Here is video of the incident between the two teammates for the race win:
Have another look at @KyleLarsonRacin's winning pass on Chase Elliott at @WGI. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/5F29w45nGZ
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) August 21, 2022
After climbing from his car, Larson stated that he wasn’t proud of how he won the race, but that he had to do what he had to do for himself and his No. 5 team.
“It’s just part of racing at road courses, especially this year, it seems like. So, again, not proud of it, but we did what we had to do,” Larson explained.
For Elliott, who led a race-high 29 laps, while his face showed obvious frustration, he claimed that he was happy that a Hendrick Motorsports car found victory lane.
The silver lining for Elliott, who has the most wins in the NASCAR Cup Series so far this year (four), is that he did lock up the regular season points championship in Sunday’s race, which will add another 15 Playoff points to his bountiful total, which will carry on to each round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
