July 1, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Kyle Larson earns pole at Road America in Xfinity Series return

Elkhart Lake, Wis.—Despite a four-year absence from the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Kyle Larson returned with a vengeance by winning the pole for the Henry 180 at Road America on Friday.

Larson topped the speed chart with a lap of 108.495 mph behind the wheel of the No. 17 HendrickCars.com Camaro—the first time Hendrick Motorsports fielded an Xfinity entry since 2009.

The pole marked the fifth of Larson’s NXS career in 109 races.

“It was good,” Larson said. “The first run, my goal was to hit my marks and I didn’t do that. It was kind of good to do that because then I could back off of that a little bit and know that if I got through the corners ok and be fast enough that I would have a shot at the pole. I didn’t expect to be that much faster than the field, but it felt really good.

“So, I’m excited about tomorrow. My car felt amazing in race trim as well. Hats off to the team for preparing a car for me to race this weekend and try to learn and better our efforts for Sunday. I’m really excited about it.”

Ty Gibbs was second fastest with a speed of 107.922 mph. Riley Herbst, Cole Custer and Sam Mayer rounded out the top five qualifiers. Sheldon Creed, Noah Gragson, Sammy Smith, Tyler Reddick and Austin Hill will complete the top five rows for Saturday’s contest. AJ Allmendinger, who won the race in 2013, experienced brake issues following NXS practice and will start from the rear.

Larson scored his 12th Xfinity Series win at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2018—his last start on the tour. Kevin Meendering, who is serving as the interim crew chief for Larson on the Cup side during Cliff Daniel’s suspension, will also oversee the NXS duties this weekend.

Although it’s been a while since Larson has pulled double-duty, the current Cup champ said it doesn’t feel that long ago.

“The driving stuff is ‘whatever,’” Larson said. “The visuals—the tach, the gauges, it’s a different style dash than even what I was used to when I was racing at Ganassi’s. Just the little things like that are hard to adjust to at first but once you’re out there, it all becomes natural. It’s just another stock car at that point.

“I’m looking forward to competing with a lot of the young up-and-comers, as I’m sure they’re looking at competing with me, also. It should be a lot of fun this weekend and at a couple of other races I get to run this year.”

When he looked at potential races to add to his schedule, Road America seemed like the logical choice since he had only one other Cup start at the 4.048-mile circuit.

“Just getting more laps in and figuring out your angles—what works and what doesn’t work, the shapes of the corners and stuff like that to try and just go faster and be better,” Larson said. “I imagine our braking points will be much deeper (on Saturday), just comparing last year’s car to this year’s car, the Cup cars can brake a lot deeper into the corner.

“That might take some getting used to at first, but I definitely think it doesn’t hurt to get more laps, especially on the same race track.”

Larson will carry similar colors to the livery sported by Ricky Hendrick--as well as the late driver's truck number.  Although Larson arrived in NASCAR eight years after the tragic accident that claimed the young racer, he has a deep appreciation for what Ricky meant to the organization.

"I never got the chance to meet Ricky (Hendrick), but I’ve heard a lot of stories," Larson said. "When we were on vacation last year, we watched that documentary that they came out with years back. So I could kind of learn a little bit about him, his family and Rick and Linda (Hendrick) even more watching that. That was good.

"And then I think for me, having children myself makes me running this car much more important. I can’t imagine losing one of my children and what that would do to me. Talking to Rick on the phone a few different times, he’s so excited about seeing this paint scheme and number on the race track. I hope to see him here this weekend. I know he’s trying hard to get here and we have a good shot to win. I did tell him that it does add some more pressure to you driving this car because you know how special it is to their family and to Hendrick Motorsports as a whole.”