KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Kyle Larson came roaring around the outside of Chris Buescher on the final lap Sunday night at Kansas Speedway, banging doors with him all the way to the finish line, only to be told by his team over the radio that everything he had given was not quite enough.
It wasn’t until Larson was on the third turn of the cooldown lap that he saw his spotter, Tyler Monn, dancing high above the track.
In the closest finish in NASCAR history, one that only became official with the review of a grainy black-and-white photo taken at the line, the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet was declared the winning car by a thousandth of a second — every bit as close as the Kentucky Derby’s three-wide photo finish a day earlier, and an even more dramatic result than the three-at-the-line conclusion to the Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway earlier this season.
“Had no clue if I won or not,” Larson said, “but honestly didn’t really care. I was like, ‘Man, that was frickin’ awesome.'”
Not so awesome for Buescher’s RFK Racing team, which had begun celebrating before the result became official. His crew chief, Scott Graves, asked to meet with NASCAR officials in their hauler. Shown the photo used to make the call, he accepted the outcome.