The NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega on Sunday began as an uneventful showing. However, complete chaos arrived in stage 2, as the "Big One" ensued. One of the drivers collected in the incident was Kyle Larson.

On lap 115 of the race, Ross Chastain made contact with race leader Bubba Wallace, causing him to go higher and spin. What followed was a chain reaction involving 25 drivers, including Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, and more.

For this 188-lap race, NASCAR had introduced new stage lengths: 98-45-45 instead of 60-60-68. In the longer first stage, covering nearly half of the race distance, led drivers to race cautiously and below their maximum speed to achieve optimum mileage. In the shorter latter stages, the full push caused a pileup.

After the race, reporter Matt Weaves questioned Larson if drivers had only two options in the race: Fuel save or crash? When asked about finding the middle ground, the Hendrick Motorsports driver replied:

"Yeah, I'm not sure. It was definitely more savings than I anticipated there in that first stage. But then yeah, like you said, the intensity was just way more in the next one. Yeah, I don't know where you find the middle ground. But like I think a lot of people said before, you can't really unlearn what you've already have learned, so yeah, fuel saving is always kind of going to be there."

The drivers have been very vocal when it comes to the Superspeedway package. In his post-race interview, Joey Logano who was also caught up in the wreck, commented on how frustrating it was, as it was unclear if NASCAR wanted drivers to race or crash. 

The huge pileup resulted in eight drivers securing a DNF next to their name on Sunday. Larson was one of them and walked away with only one point to his name.

Kyle Larson reveals fuel issue that derailed Talladega effort

Kyle Larson began the race on the front row. However, an error during his first pit stop relegated him from the front of the pack to the back.

Explaining what went wrong in the pits, the reigning NASCAR Cup champion said, "I don't know what happened on our first pit stop, but we didn't get as much fuel in it that we needed to. I was saving fuel and got shuffled to the back. We had to take a little longer on the next pit stop, so we lost the draft and had to restart in the back to start Stage Two."

The big crash, however, ended any hopes he might have had to recover from the No. 5 squad's pit trouble. After Talladega, Kyle Larson sits sixth in the standings, with a 169-point deficit to the leader, Tyler Reddick.

The HMS driver will be looking forward to regrouping ahead of the next race at Texas, where he finished fourth last year.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Chionia Libania Colaco

Edited by

Yask Kotak