NASCAR Crash Course: Kyle Larson delivers latest Hendrick Motorsports triumph at Indianapolis

The biggest knock against Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series return to the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is it was near impossible to pass. The 30-year anniversary of the Brickyard 400 turned into a chess match of fuel mileage, track position and pit strategy with one notable exception: Kyle Larson.

Larson charged through the field in the final 30-plus laps, coming from outside the top 20 into the lead to earn a win in one of the sport's crown jewel events. In doing so, he vaulted into the points lead despite missing a Cup race this season to run open-wheel's Indianapolis 500 back in May.

Larson's IndyCar debut didn't go as planned, running 18th after a speeding penalty on pit road. But superstars don't make the same mistake twice, Larson utilizing passing precision to mow down stock cars that spent much of this 400-mile race stuck in place.

"It's a technical track," Hendrick Motorsports chairman and inaugural Brickyard 400 winner Jeff Gordon explained. "There's a lot of different ways to approach the corners, how you arc in, how much brake you use, when you release the brake, working with the team to get the car set up right."

Larson went out and showed the rest how it's done. Lap by lap, at different places around this 2.5-mile oval, he snuck by drivers who got ahead of him on better pit strategy and fuel mileage. By the time the race hit five laps to go, he was third behind Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski.

That's when a late crash involving Kyle Busch set up two NASCAR overtime restarts. Keselowski ran out of gas before the first, darting down pit road to allow Larson the room to blow by Blaney just before a caution for a multi-car wreck behind them. The moment left Blaney ballistic as it all played out (WARNING: swears aplenty in this video).

After exiting the car, Blaney calmed down, but still said NASCAR officials should "Call it off and [make drivers] re-choose [restart lanes in that situation]… I'm just upset. That's a heartbreaker."

"[Keselowski] just ducked off onto pit road," Larson said. "I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe this is going exactly how we had kind of hoped and had thought about.'"

It was smooth sailing from there, Larson besting Blaney one more time before a stalled-out Ryan Preece ended the race under yellow. It was Larson's first Indy victory for a 40th-anniversary Hendrick program celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first win at Indianapolis (Gordon). HMS now has 11 wins here in 28 Indy oval races, the most of any team to add to their resume as the best organization in modern NASCAR history.

"I've always felt like the best teams rise to this occasion as a whole," Gordon added Sunday. "I think the 5 team is very, very strong, one of the best teams out there obviously. I think they now having this win under their belt, it's really going to kind of set the tone for the rest of the season of who's the biggest threat for the championship."

Traffic Report

Green: Tyler Reddick. A Brickyard 400 pole turned runner-up finish continues Reddick's career-defining season with 23XI Racing. Despite just one win, he has five straight top-six results to stay within striking distance of the regular-season points championship with four races left.

Yellow: Roger Penske. Team Penske's Ryan Blaney was within reach of the victory, his third-place finish maintaining some recent momentum for the reigning Cup champ. But this track, so special to Penske on the open-wheel side (20 Indy 500 wins) has given him just one Cup victory to speak of: Brad Keselowski in 2018.

Red: Kyle Busch. You're telling me it happened again? A late spin by Busch after contact with Denny Hamlin forced NASCAR overtime and took away a promising top-10 finish for a No. 8 team in crisis. Busch has now run 25th or worse in six of the last eight races, DNF'd in five of them and sits 112 points below the playoff cutline.

Speeding Ticket: Pit blending penalties. Another race, another set of complaints for pit penalties drivers don't seem to understand from NASCAR. This time around, Chase Elliott and Brad Keselowski got busted early for going above the blend line at Indianapolis which separated cars exiting the pits. See the example below.

Should that really be a penalty? The car is well outside harm's way and no driver in their right mind would be positioned there at full speed entering a turn.

The incident infuriated Elliott , who left the track without comment, and didn't do much to affect the outcome of the race. While both drivers recovered to contend, ticky-tack penalties like this one by officials always tend to backfire in this sport.

Oops!

A three-abreast move on a restart during the final stage led to a wreck that took out drivers with nine combined NASCAR Cup championships: Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano.

"I was cruising along on the bottom," Johnson said. "Got hit in the right rear and turned in the outside. That's about it. These restarts are just so aggressive, everybody's pushing. It's the end of the race and it's go time. Sadly, those pushes didn't end up right."

Both Blaney and Carson Hocevar, whose contact started the wreck, soldiered on to top-10 finishes in the race. Once again, Hocevar is under fire for aggressive driving as Blaney put the blame on the rookie for the incident.

"77's on the bottom," Blaney said , "And [Hocevar] just tried to jam it in the middle lane from the bottom, so he just shoved me in the left rear getting in the corner. There's no room. So… it doesn't surprise me, that guy, he does dumb shit all the time. And he wrecks a ton of cars and [gets] away with it.

"There's just no room here. And when I see the replay, I'm going to even know that he did something even more foolish than the little bit I saw."