Bob Pockrass
FOX NASCAR Insider
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Kyle Larson didn’t get to race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May, missing a race that contributed to him coming up short for the regular-season title.
His victory Sunday at the track solidified him as the championship favorite.
Larson led 62 of the 109 laps for his sixth Cup victory of 2024 as he cruised to the triumph on the Charlotte road course, a combination of the oval and an infield portion of the facility.
While Larson’s win wasn’t dramatic, other parts of the race — and postrace inspection — were as his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman was disqualified for his car failing to meet postrace weight requirements. The 38th-place finish for Bowman resulted in him not advancing to the next round of the playoffs. The team can appeal the decision, and the appeal would be heard this week.
With Bowman being eliminated, Joey Logano moved into the final advancement spot to the Round of 8 (NASCAR’s version of a semifinal round).
William Byron entered the race as the only driver locked into the semifinal round, where he will be joined by Hendrick teammates Larson and Chase Elliott; Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell; Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano; and 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick.
Eliminated from the playoffs were Bowman, Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez and Chase Briscoe.
Takeaways from Charlotte:
Bowman Disqualified
Bowman thought he had advanced with an 18th-place finish, but his car was too light in postrace weights.
“We are working to understand the issue and will make a decision Monday about whether to submit an appeal,” Hendrick Motorsports said in a statement.
NASCAR Cup Series rules require the car to be 3,400-3,500 pounds, depending on the weight of the driver. The team gets 0.5 percent — about 17 pounds — of tolerance after a race but the Bowman car still did not make weight.
The team was allowed to add fuel to the car and purge the water system and put in new water.
“We ran it back on [the scales] and unfortunately it was the same weight,” NASCAR Cup Series Director Brad Moran said. “The car had a weight issue. … That ends up in a disqualification.”
Because of the possible appeal, Moran would not say how much weight the car was below specifications.
Larson Champ Favorite
The quotes might reek of swagger but they were more matter-of-fact as Larson now has twice as many wins as any other driver this season.
Larson: “The field knows that we’re strong. I think the field knows that we could win at any track.”
Crew chief Cliff Daniels: “[With] a very strong amount of respect for all the teams that are going to be in the Round of 8. Everybody has earned their way to get there. I think our No. 1 competitor is ourselves, and I think if we do the things that we need to do, our team can execute.”
The series heads to Las Vegas to open the next round, a track where Larson has won the last two races. He also has won at the other tracks — Homestead and Martinsville — in the round.
“We want to go to Vegas with a lot of confidence just in our recent run there,” Daniels said. “We’re going to have a healthy amount of respect for that race and ready for all of them.”
Reddick Rallies
Reddick, the regular-season champion, had hard contact with Hamlin trying to avoid Austin Dillon in the second stage. He had to pit several times for repairs and spent much of the event behind Logano in the battle for what they thought was the final spot (until learning about the Bowman DQ hours after the race).
Pitting for tires with 27 laps remaining while Logano didn’t want to give up his track position proved to be the right call as Reddick blistered his way from 26th to 11th, leaving him four points ahead of Logano, who dropped from fourth to eighth over the final 20 laps.
Reddick did it mostly clean but did have contact with Daniel Hemric in the hairpin turn.
“He just made a mistake,” Hemric said. “I knew he was on fresher tires. … Nothing egregious, just part of the chaos back there. I know he’s on tires and has to make progress forward but wished for a little more patience there.”
Beyond feeling bad for that mistake, it was a gritty performance for the driver for the team co-owned by Michael Jordan.
“That’s not exactly the plan of getting back to the front, getting together with fellow drivers you care about,” Reddick said. “But it’s racing. It’s a cutoff race. You’ve got to make aggressive moves and you’ve got to go for it. I tried to do it as cleanly as possible. … It was definitely a mistake.
“It doesn’t change the fact that it happened. It did. But we had to pass some cars.”
Cindric, who finished fourth, did as much as he could. Briscoe and Suarez had mechanical troubles.
“I felt like within reason, without going over my head, the team called a great race, I felt I drove a great race — just not enough,” Cindric said. “I felt like we were great but not the best. So really cool to bring that when we needed it the most. But we needed to find another level to win.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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