Kyle Larson: 'We had to come in here and win' even before penalty

Kyle Larson isn’t viewing the 10-point penalty his team received Wednesday as a massive setback. The No. 42 car was already in a hole entering Sunday’s race at Kansas anyway.

“Obviously a 10-point penalty doesn’t help, but I felt like with even being 26 points back we were going to probably have to go into this week and get a win to make it to the next round,” Larson said Friday. “It doesn’t really mean much to me the 10 points, like I said because I view this weekend — or viewed it before that we had to come in here and win.”

Chip Ganassi Racing appealed the penalty to Larson’s car, which was assessed because NASCAR said the team used unallowed materials to fix damage Larson’s car sustained at Talladega during a spin. The appeal was held Friday morning at Kansas and the penalty was upheld. Ganassi has made a final appeal and that will be held Friday night. The chances of the final appeal being successful and the penalty being overturned are slim.

Larson battled back to finish 11th at Talladega, so a 10-point penalty for illegal fasteners on his car is better than the team being unable to fix the damage and Larson failing to finish the race. A last-place finish would have been worth one point. Larson scored 26 points for finishing 11th. With the penalty, Larson got 16 points at Talladega.

It’s also worth wondering if NASCAR should change the penalty process Larson’s team is experiencing for 2019. Larson’s team committed the penalty during the race and in-race penalties are typically enforced with penalties during the race whether they may be for illegal car modifications or simple pit road penalties.

When crew members were hip-checking cars during pit stops to create dents for better side downforce a few years ago, NASCAR would penalize teams during races with a pass-through penalty and force them to fix the issue.

That wonder is of no use to Larson at this point, however. He at least has some confidence knowing that he finished fourth at Kansas in the spring.

“Last weekend is last weekend,” Larson said. “I think if you had a 26-point gap, say you win both stages or something that would put you back in it depending on what kind of race [Martin Truex Jr.] and [Clint Bowyer] and all those guys have. But, yeah, I don’t know. We will just go out there Sunday and run hard and hopefully it all works out.”

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter

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