Kyle Larson won the FireKeepers Casino 400 from Michigan International Speedway on Sunday afternoon for his second-consecutive victory at the track.
Larson started on the pole, and led 96 of the 200 laps on Sunday. Larson had to beat Kyle Busch on a late restart to take the lead, and then had to hold off other top drivers to get to victory lane.
Larson got a push from Ryan Blaney to take the lead, and he said he was able to use that to get to victory lane.
“Ryan Blaney gave me a heck of a push, so I really got to thank him a ton,” Larson said. “To withstand a few restarts over some tough competitors was really important. I knew the Penske cars took off good, so I was happy to see [Blaney] behind me.”
Larson picked up his second victory of the year on Sunday, but he said he and his team still need to work on closing out races.
“We’ve been so close to so many other wins…we’ve had six second-place finishes,” Larson said. “Could have 30 more bonus points, but good season all-in-all. We’ll continue to keep building on what we’ve got.”
Chase Elliott finished second on Sunday, and he came close to becoming the fourth driver to pick up their first career victory in 2017. Elliott said he was happy with his third-career runner-up finish at Michigan after a rough start to the weekend.
“From where we started the day to where we ended up, I’m just really proud of our efforts,” Elliott said. “I really think we overachieved today with what we had Friday and Saturday.”
“We put ourselves in position to rely on some late-race restarts…had a couple opportunities to get the lead and unfortunately it just didn’t work out.”
Unofficial results:
1. Kyle Larson
2. Chase Elliott
3. Joey Logano
4. Denny Hamlin
5. Jamie McMurray
6. Martin Truex Jr.
7. Kyle Busch
8. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
9. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
10. Jimmie Johnson
11. Matt Kenseth
12. Kurt Busch
13. Erik Jones
14. Kevin Harvick
15. Ryan Newman
16. Brad Keselowski
17. Trevor Bayne
18. AJ Allmendinger
19. Darrell Wallace Jr.
20. Ty Dillon
21. Kasey Kahne
22. Paul Menard
23. Michael McDowell
24. Daniel Suarez
25. Ryan Blaney
26. Clint Bowyer
27. Austin Dillon
28. Matt DiBenedetto
29. David Ragan
30. Corey LaJoie
31. Cole Whitt
32. Landon Cassill
33. Ryan Sieg
34. Reed Sorenson
35. Jeffrey Earnhardt
36. Chris Buescher
37. Danica Patrick
