Coming to the final restart, Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart gave his driver, Denny Hamlin, some powerful motivation.
“You want some, take some, you want it bad enough, get some. Let’s go.”
And then, for two laps, Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher took some, got some and delivered the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history on Sunday night at Kansas Speedway.
First, how did Hamlin even lose the race to begin with?
“Hindsight, should have taken the outside knowing (Larson) was going to split us (three wide) the first chance he got to go for the win,” Hamlin said. “Once he did, it killed all of our momentum. You get dragged from both sides of the car and you’re a parachute but I had a great view of a great finish.”
And what a finish it was too.
Buescher left a lane open against the wall at the entrance to Turn 3 and Larson took it.
But it was also probably fair for Buescher to have not driven all the way to the wall because it simply lacked grip all race. Larson himself tried to run it multiple times in the first stage and it was simply too greasy. It was so slick to the point where his Hendrick No. 5 team even pondered if it was still a little wet from the storm that delayed the start of the race several hours.
“He got kind of looking in the mirror and he entered a little bit lower into 3, and I was able to have that momentum with some clean air to get to his right side,” Larson said. “I got pretty loose there in the center of 3 and 4 next to him, just kind of in an awkward aero spot there and figured I would smash the wall off of 4.
“But somehow it gripped up really good. We touched a little bit off of 4. I noticed that he was going to have the run back, so I hung a left and just tried to kill his momentum. I’ve seen so many times in NASCAR where if the guy has got a run you can just door him and it kind of stops it.
“That’s what happened, and I got to the start-finish line, had no clue if I won or not. I guess I cared but really didn’t honestly care because I was just like, man, that was freaking awesome.”
Buescher had no problem with how the race was decided.
“There was a lot of blocking from me — I certainly could have done more, and should have done more, I guess,” Buescher said. “It was really tight up there and we obviously made contact.”I’m sure he wished he had more space, too, and banged doors on the frontstretch all the way to the line.”
But again, to even get to that point, Larson needed to find a way to overcome the disadvantage of being on the second row.
What Hamlin and Gabehart anticipated came to pass. Larson took them three-wide and then it was just a matter of figuring out how to make a winning pass on Buescher, who has the well documented advantage of clean air.
At the same time, the leader also punches a hole in the air on the backstretch at Kansas and Larson just had a mega run, and that’s where Buescher left the high line open.
“Honestly, I thought I was going to be at the disadvantage off of (Turn) 4,” Larson said. “I thought with just the way these cars work with aero, I thought with him getting packed to my left side I was just going to get plowing tight and just smoke the wall, but for whatever reason it gripped up really good.
“I knew the side draft game was going to be huge and just was trying to stall any bit of run I could.”
Lost in all of this is how the caution that set up the overtime finish actually saved the race for Larson. Before Kyle Busch shredded a right rear tire that sent him around and brought out the caution, the race appeared destined to be decided by the calculators.
Hamlin had a one second lead over Buescher, both drivers nursing their right-side tires but also incredibly close on fuel mileage. Martin Truex Jr. had just taken second place when the caution came out and would have forced Hamlin to pick up the pace.
Larson was fourth and their race was over until the caution gave both pit crew and driver a chance to make a difference.
“We got lucky that a caution came out,” Larson said. “I could tell my right front was beat up, and I was just trying to survive to get to the checkered flag. Then I saw where Kyle I think blew a right rear and was hoping they were going to throw a caution so we could pit for some tires.
“We left pit road in third, and I was happy with that because I wanted to choose second row inside and was able to do that. Kind of had a plan from before I chose the bottom that I was going to try if I was close enough to split the leader to the middle and then maybe race it out from there.”
Being part of a historic NASCAR finish did little to take the sting out of Buescher coming up short in breaking a season long Ford Performance drought.
“It sucks to celebrate on the backstretch and then pull up to the front straightaway and be told no. I don’t know how everything transpired honestly. Not right now. It sucks in a lot of ways.
It’s a win Larson will always remember and he would have felt that way if the results were flipped too.
“I respect the heck out of his talent, and too, I think if I would have finished — say he won and I finished second, I was still happy,” he said.
What he wasn’t entirely happy about was actually breaking the Cup Series record for closest finish, previously held by Ricky Craven over Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003.
“I don’t know, that finish with Craven and Kurt was, in my opinion, way cooler than that,” Larson said. “That was like a battle the last however many laps and came down to a photo finish.
“But no, this was still cool, and hopefully it can hang on for a long time.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
