Decision to prioritize Indy 500, miss Coca-Cola 600 comes back to bite Kyle Larson

Kyle Larson put together a dominant performance at the Darlington Raceway on Sunday night, leading 263 laps and finishing fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season finale.

When the points were tallied after the first 26 races of the 2024 season, Larson was just one marker behind Tyler Reddick, who won the regular-season crown and the 15 playoff points that come with it.

Larson, who is the first seed in the Cup Series playoffs, earned 10 additional playoff points for his second-place standing, but the five he missed out on could prove to be costly.

In 2022, Larson missed the Round of 8 by just two points, a product of a championship hangover season in which he only won two races in the regular season. Larson knows firsthand that every point matters, making his defeat for the regular-season title that much more puzzling.

Of course, it's not just one race that decides a season-long championship — self-inflicted crashes at Michigan and Chicago went a long way in determining Larson's fate — but one race, in particular, stands out as the turning point in the battle for the title.

On May 26, Larson, who was planning on running the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, had a difficult decision to make: With the Indy 500 being delayed due to rain, should he stay and chase an Indianapolis 500 win, or fly to Charlotte and compete in the Cup Series race?

Larson chose to stay in Indianapolis and complete his maiden Indy 500 run, flying to Charlotte immediately after the conclusion of the race in an effort to at least finish the Coke 600, which Justin Allgaier started in his place.

Ironically, the same storm system that delayed Larson's IndyCar debut was the death knell for the World 600, which was called official at lap 249, just minutes after Larson arrived at the track and changed fire suits.

Even if he had finished the Coke 600 that evening, he wouldn't have been awarded championship points — NASCAR only awards points to the driver that starts the race, regardless of a driver change — but the decision to prioritize the Indy 500 became the focal point of any NASCAR conversation for the next week.

There was also a question of whether or not Larson would be given a waiver to compete in the playoffs after missing the race at Charlotte, but NASCAR granted Larson the waiver after the June 2 race in St. Louis. On June 9, Larson won his third race of 2024 at Sonoma, which would've locked him into the postseason even if his waiver had been denied.

Nearly three months later, however, Larson's decision, whether right or wrong, came back to hurt him at a pivotal point of the season. Larson still has a comfortable cushion and is rightfully viewed as a championship favorite, but if he's eliminated by a slim margin, the choice to prioritize Indy over Charlotte will once more be placed under the microscope.