HAMPTON, Ga. — Kyle Larson walked away from a vicious crash in Sunday’s Cup playoff opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The back end of Larson’s car got loose and his car shot up the track late in the first stage. After slamming the wall with the right front, Larson’s car came down the track and was hit in the rear by Chase Briscoe.
Both drivers were uninjured.
“I’m OK,” Larson said after exiting the infield care center. “Thankfully everything held up well inside of the car. That was a huge hit. I’m not really sure, like, what caused it. I was actually sort of like tight loaded in the corner. That was pretty far out the corner and stepped out. I don’t know. It just all happened really fast.”
Larson entered the playoffs as the No. 1 seed with 2040 points. He entered the race 39 points above the cutline.
Larson will finish 37th and score one point.
Briscoe will finish last in the 38-car field and score one point. He entered the playoffs 13th in the 16-driver field. He now may have to win at either Watkins Glen next weekend or Bristol the weekend after that to advance beyond the first round.
Briscoe made the playoffs by winning last weekend’s Southern 500, the final race of the regular season.
“You can be on top one week and you can be at the very bottom of the mountain the next week,” Briscoe said. “It’s unfortunate. I thought our car was an adjustment away from being pretty good. We weren’t very good at all balance-wise and I still felt like I was able to kind of run right there around the seventh to 12th-place guys.
“I was watching my outside getting into (Turn) 1 because somebody kept trying to get to my outside and was probably a little late just trying to see the 5 car wrecking. I didn’t expect anybody to wreck because they weren’t really two-wide, and then I saw the smoke and tried slowing down.
“I knew he was coming down the racetrack and just kept trying to feed the thing left and slow it down and I couldn’t get left quick enough and then he kind of started sliding back down the track at the very last minute, so I tried to turn back right to avoid him and just KO’d him. It was a big hit. One of the biggest hits I’ve had in a long time.”
