Kansas Rundown

A rain delayed Kansas race delivered the best race of the season and a historical finish. In overtime, Kyle Larson made a wrecker or checkers type move on Chris Buescher to win by 0.001 seconds, the closest in NASCAR history.

Larson emerged as one of the best cars in the field early on in Stage 1, battling with Ross Chastain and Christopher Bell for the lead until pit stops. Larson settled into the lead until a hard charging Denny Hamlin made his way up front. Hamlin made his way around Larson to win Stage 1, but pit road proved to be a tough day for the leaders. Hamlin was slow exiting his pit box as he and Austin Hill pitted too close and made it hard for Hamlin to exit. This costed Hamlin a bunch of spots that he couldn't quite make up.

Larson regained control of the race once again until they reached pit stops were pit road was still endangering the leaders' race as the #5 crew had an issue with Larsons front tire, costing him the lead. Chris Buescher was the one to take the lead from Larson after this and he went on to win Stage 2. For the third time the leader had an issue on pit road as Buescher was busted for having the pit crew going over the wall too soon sending him to the rear. 

Stage 3 started as chaotic as it possibly could've with four straight cautions which included Jimmie Johnson, Corey Lajoie, Austin Hill, Austin Cindric, Bubba Wallace, Michael McDowell, Harrison Burton, and Joey Logano. The only one of this group that was taken out of the race was Johnson. 

The Burton caution created a variance in strategy as Hamlin and Buescher decided to pit while the other leaders stayed out. Just a lap later was the Logano caution which brought all of the other leaders down pit road putting Hamlin and Buescher up front. They quickly pulled away from the pack while others that stayed out slowed down the rest behind them.  Those two were in a heated battle for the lead for about 30 laps until both were advised to heavily save fuel. In this time Truex started gaining rapidly. In just two laps he went gained nearly 1.5 seconds on Denny while passing Larson and Buescher to get to 2nd. With less than 10 to go and Truex looking like he was going to secure the win, Kyle Busch spun out while running in 5th place.

Everyone on the lead lap pitted for this caution heading into overtime, nearly everyone opting for two tires while Truex chose four. It was Hamlin and Buescher leading the lines, but Larson shot to in the inside of Hamlin entering turn 1 to make it three wide. This took Hamlin out of the race and the battle quickly became between Larson and Buescher. Buescher took the white flag and held Larson off down the back straight. Through turn 3, Buescher left the top lane open and Larson sends it to his outside exiting turn 4. Beating and banging down the front straight to the finish line, Buescher's team thought they had it secured and were celebrating. But, just a moment later NASCAR announces that the 5 car was instead the winner by 0.001 seconds. The physical distance of this finish from the replay was just Larson's splitter which may be just an inch if not less.

Separating the historical finish from the race in its entirety, this was easily the best race of the year. Multiple lanes being available, comers and goers all day long, long green flag runs, clip worthy wrecks, and strategy is everything you can possibly ask for from a NASCAR race and this delivered just that. Now include the finish on top of that and it just gets that much better. It did hit a lull in Stage 2 as the pack was mostly settled so I can't give it a 10/10 but I'll give this race the next best thing. This easily sits as a 9.5/10 race in my book and one we'll look back on when talking about the Next Gen era.