Kyle Larson will start at the rear of the field in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in a backup car after crashing in practice.
He hit the wall coming out of the infield section of the road course and onto the oval. The No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet got loose when making the transition onto the banking and hit the wall with the right front and then the right rear.
The 2021 series champion will not post a qualifying lap as the team makes the change to the backup car. Larson is 15 points above the playoff grid cutline.
“I just got loose entering [Turn] 8 and overcorrected and got the right front into the wall,” Larson said. “It gets bouncy over there, and it stepped out on me.”
Larson, however, wasn’t the only playoff driver to encounter trouble in practice. Christopher Bell was going down the backstretch toward the chicane when the No. 20 Toyota moved to the right and bounced off the wall.
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23XI Racing teammates Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick led the practice session. Wallace was fastest at 102.295mph (81.646s), while Reddick was second on the chart at 102.210mph.
Chase Briscoe was third fastest at 102.062mph, Corey LaJoie fourth at 101.983mph and AJ Allmendinger fifth at 101.957mph.
Ty Gibbs was sixth at 101.814mph, Daniel Suarez seventh at 101.725mph, Larson eighth at 101.692mph, Joey Logano ninth at 101.665mph and Chase Elliott 10th at 101.607mph.
The remaining playoff drivers in practice were Ryan Blaney (12th), Denny Hamlin (15th), Bell (17th), Ross Chastain (18th), Martin Truex Jr. (19th), Chris Buescher (20th), Brad Keselowski (21st), Kyle Busch (26th), and William Byron (29th).
The only other incident was Ty Dillon hitting the wall coming off Turn 1, damaging the right side of his Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
There are 37 drivers entered in the Bank of America Roval 400.