By Aaron Bearden

A breakdown of Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway, the 12th race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Main Takeaway

No one knew who won in the moments immediately after Sunday’s AdventHealth 400. Not Kyle Larson. Not Chris Buescher. 

Not even NASCAR itself. 

For a brief moment, it appeared that Buescher might have earned his first win of 2024. NASCAR’s timing and scoring had the Texan ahead. But a review of the photo finish system showed that Larson had nipped the RFK Racing driver at the line by all of an inch or two. 

The official winning margin? .001 seconds – the closest finish in Cup Series history. 

Neither driver had looked to be in winning position minutes earlier. Denny Hamlin led Buescher and others on a fuel-saving strategy. Martin Truex Jr. was first among those able to run flat-out and was chasing Hamlin down. But a caution with six to go for a Kyle Busch spin turned the race on its head. 

That caution led the field to pit road for two-and-four-tire stops. Hamlin’s No. 11 team opted for two and led the field to green, while Truex faded to the back of the top-10 with four fresh tires. 

Both drivers were left vulnerable for different reasons. Hamlin chose the inside on the final restart and was immediately split three-wide when Larson dove under him from third. Truex marched forward quickly but just ran out of time in fourth. 

That left Buescher and Larson to battle for the win. Buescher led the white flag lap and kept the top spot off of Turn 2, but Larson jumped to his outside in the final set of turns. 

The pair knocked doors twice and came across the line in a virtual dead heat. 

“(Buescher) got kind of looking in the mirror and he entered a little bit lower into (Turn) 3, and I was able to have that momentum with some clean air to get to his right side,” Larson said of the battle. “I got pretty loose there in the center of 3 and 4 next to him, just kind of in an awkward aero spot there and figured I would smash the wall off of 4.

“But somehow it gripped up really good. We touched a little bit off of 4. I noticed that he was going to have the run back, so I hung a left and just tried to kill his momentum. I’ve seen so many times in NASCAR where if the guy has got a run you can just door him and it kind of stops it.

“That’s what happened, and I got to the start-finish line, had no clue if I won or not. I guess I cared but really didn’t honestly care because I was just like, man, that was freaking awesome.” 

Buescher’s team thought it had won in the seconds afterward. 

“The pylon had us up front,” a perplexed Buescher said afterward. “We were celebrating. We were on top of the pylon and I was on the front stretch and they said, ‘It was (Larson’s) 5 all of a sudden.’” 

The opposite situation happened to Larson’s crew. The Californian initially thanked the crew after what was believed to be a narrow defeat. But seconds later the 2021 champ’s spotter started “going crazy” and he was finally told he’d won. 

Debates flared up initially online. A crooked paint job on the track’s start-finish line made it difficult to deduce who had gotten to the finish first before NASCAR posted the winning picture. But the shot from NASCAR’s camera system made it clear – if barely. 

Buescher’s crew chief, Scott Graves, met with NASCAR officials to confirm the news after the race. He admitted defeat after seeing the evidence. Buescher didn’t contest the finish and said he had no issue with the door-banging racing for the win coming to the line. 

Ricky Craven, the winner of the Cup Series’ previous closest finish in an all-time classic at Darlington Raceway, tipped his cap to Larson and Buescher after the race. 

The moment could be the first of many for Larson in what promises to be a big Month of May. Larson will make the trip to Indianapolis later this month to make his first attempt at the NTT IndyCar Series’ Indianapolis 500. 

IndyCar is a series known for some incredible photo finishes on ovals. But Larson and the series will be hard-pressed to top NASCAR’s Kansas classic finish anytime soon. 

Good, Bad and Ugly

Ugly: Ford can’t catch a break, man

There have been three classic NASCAR photo finishes this season. 

Ford has been at the losing end of all of them. 

First came Ryan Blaney’s narrow defeat to Daniel Suarez at Atlanta Motor Speedway. In April Ryan Sieg fell victim to last-lap heroics from Sam Mayer in the Xfinity Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. 

Now Buescher has been added to the list, losing in a historically-close race with Larson. 

All Chevrolet wins. All Ford losses. 

The margins of victory in those losses for Ford? .003 seconds, .002 seconds and .001 seconds. Three losses by a combined .006 seconds – all in a season when Ford has yet to find a way to victory lane. 

Brutal. 

The good news is these close losses mean the Blue Ovals are at least capable of getting to victory lane. But given the trends I half-expect a Ford team to lose on a tiebreak in a dead heat at this stage. 

Good: NASCAR enjoys another classic

This season has been a mixed bag for NASCAR’s top tour. But when the racing is good, it’s really good. 

Twice in a dozen races the Cup Series has enjoyed all-time classic finishes at Atlanta and Kansas. Better yet, those finishes have come after eventful, fun races. 

These haven’t been incredible moments saving subpar races. They’ve been the cherry on top of what was already a delicious sundae. 

Bad: SHR’s apparent miscommunication

One of the interesting stories to come from the Kansas weekend was news of a study group that three of Stewart-Haas Racing’s four drivers – Noah Gragson, Chase Briscoe and Josh Berry – have participated in to prepare for each race. 

Gragson discussed the group Tuesday during a media availability. He, Briscoe and Berry went on to qualify well for Sunday’s race. 

All good, right? Except it sounds like the team’s fourth driver knew nothing about it. 

However this miscommunication happened, the end result is a bad look for an organization that’s been otherwise trending well in recent weeks. There’s plenty of uncertainty in the SHR camp, with potential for a downsizing in the coming years. Despite that and a poor 2023, the organization has proven capable of consistent speed in recent weeks with its Nos. 10 and 14 teams. 

Hopefully it can incorporate Preece into the fold for this study group and keep moving forward. 

Notes

  • How about some good news from SHR? Gragson has been on a roll lately, earning a career-best three consecutive top-10s. 
  • Hamlin wound up fifth after leading in the closing laps of regulation. The three-time season winner felt there was little he could do with the smart move Larson made. “It left me in a spot where I was vulnerable there in the middle,” he said. 
  • Truex came close to victory in both regulation and overtime. He marched up to battle for third from 10th in the two-lap dash, but just ran out of time. “I don’t know what we need to do to close one out, but the guys did a good job with our Auto-Owners Camry.,” he said. “We were in position to steal one there.” 
  • Kyle Busch nearly threw his whole race away when he spun from the top-five in the closing laps. But Busch salvaged the day with a crazy drive forward in the final two-lap dash. 

  • The last lap also saw a late accident between Tyler Reddick, Corey Heim and Austin Dillon. 

  • Jimmie Johnson showed promise early in the weekend, qualifying a respectable 19th in his third start in the past four weeks. But the seven-time Cup champ was caught up in a mid-race crash with Corey LaJoie and wound up finishing last at day’s end. It was just the sixth time Johnson has finished last in his Cup career. 

Race Results

  1. Kyle Larson
  2. Chris Buescher
  3. Chase Elliott
  4. Martin Truex Jr.
  5. Denny Hamlin
  6. Christopher Bell
  7. Alex Bowman
  8. Kyle Busch
  9. Noah Gragson
  10. Michael McDowell
  11. Brad Keselowski
  12. Ryan Blaney
  13. John Hunter Nemechek
  14. Todd Gilliland
  15. Josh Berry
  16. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  17. Bubba Wallace
  18. Justin Haley
  19. Ross Chastain
  20. Tyler Reddick
  21. Chase Briscoe
  22. Corey Heim
  23. William Byron
  24. Carson Hocevar
  25. Austin Dillon
  26. Corey LaJoie
  27. Daniel Suarez
  28. Ryan Preece
  29. Zane Smith
  30. Daniel Hemric
  31. Derek Kraus
  32. Ty Gibbs
  33. Austin Hill
  34. Joey Logano
  35. Riley Herbst
  36. Harrison Burton
  37. Austin Cindric
  38. Jimmie Johnson

Stage 1

  1. Denny Hamlin
  2. Ross Chastain
  3. Kyle Larson
  4. Christopher Bell
  5. Chris Buescher
  6. Ty Gibbs
  7. Martin Truex Jr.
  8. Kyle Busch
  9. Noah Gragson
  10. Chase Elliott

Stage 2

  1. Chris Buescher
  2. Kyle Larson
  3. Denny Hamlin
  4. Kyle Busch
  5. Martin Truex Jr.
  6. Ty Gibbs
  7. Alex Bowman
  8. Tyler Reddick
  9. Ross Chastain
  10. Noah Gragson

To see the current playoff picture, check out our weekly Playoff Points update. 

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(Top photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

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