NASCAR CUP SERIES: COKE ZERO SUGAR 400

August 23, 2025

Kyle Larson

Pit Lane Interview

Q. When I spoke to the 5 team earlier today, there were a couple of goals on the agenda. One was win the darned race, and you did pretty well getting toward the front at the end there. What happened?

KYLE LARSON: What happened? I don't even know. A lot of stuff happened. We were able to get to lead our lane and Chase went with us, which was great. Then I don't know if it just broke the momentum up of the bottom and the top lane, but then the two Fords got rolling on the outside.

Was just kind of hoping our middle lane would go or something would happen. But yeah, I don't know. We did a really good job all night getting the Stage 1 win and had a shot to win Stage 2, just made some mistakes.

Then I don't really think I made any mistakes there at the end, just the lanes and stuff didn't work out in our favor. Yeah, cool to get another finish on a superspeedway and great to have Alex in the playoffs. That was pretty crazy there at the end with all the cars around us who needed a win to get locked in, and that was going to hurt him.

Happy that Blaney won and was hoping just one of us who had won could win. Glad to have Alex in and all four Hendrick cars go for a championship.

Q. What's it say now about the playoffs and Hendrick Motorsports and their strength?

KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I think we've been kind of quietly getting better here lately with the 5 team, and we get to go to one of our better tracks next week at Darlington, and hopefully can just get some momentum for our final 10 weeks going.

It's a fun time of year, excited about the opportunity to race for another championship, and wouldn't want to do it with any other group. Looking forward to it with our Hendrick Motorsports team and Hendrickcars.com, and see if we can get a Chevy win.

Q. Did you sense as you were going backwards that the 12 was going forward and he could accomplish that goal for you guys?

KYLE LARSON: It's all happening so quick, so it's hard to kind of process what's going on. Obviously I knew the 12 was pushing the 41 there. I think coming to the white or something.

Obviously I don't even know who was around me that had a win, but it looked like it was only me, Chase and Blaney. So I was just hopeful that something would work out where one of us three could win, and was happy that Blaney did because we had a lot of objectives today, but one was to see Alex get locked in.

For him to do that was to gain a lot of points and beat the 45 or have a guy win that had already won. Thankfully with his misfortune a guy like Blaney won.