Larson bounces back in spectacular fashion to win at Homestead-Miami

Kyle Larson won the Baptist Health 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway after an impressive comeback. The 2021 champion moved up position by position after an incident that left him outside the top 20 with 45 laps remaining in the race.

During the race, the driver of the Chevrolet No. 07 for Spire Motorsports passed his competitors one by one in the final laps. After the setback, Larson regained speed and overtook Layne Riggs, a rookie from Front Row Motorsports, with just two laps to go, winning by a margin of 1.340 seconds.

"I wasn't sure if I could make it back to the front," admitted Larson, who now has four wins in just 16 starts in the series, two of them in his last four races. "I didn't get the restart I wanted, it took me too long to start passing them, and then I started hugging the wall, which worked well for me in turns 1 and 2."

Corey Heim led before mechanical issues

Although Larson took the win, it was Corey Heim who controlled much of the race. The driver of the Toyota No. 11 for TRICON Garage led 78 laps, started from the pole position, and won both stages of the race.

However, Heim faced mechanical issues in the final 20 laps when his truck began to intermittently shut down. "I felt good, and then suddenly the engine would cut out completely. The dashboard would go black, and I had no power until I completely restarted it. I was rolling without power for six seconds while trying to turn the switch off and on," Heim explained.

Larson acknowledged that without these mechanical issues, the win would have been more challenging: "I'm not sure what happened to the 11, but it definitely helped us. I don't think I could have caught him otherwise. I would have probably finished second, but it would have been tough to pass him."

Results and championship changes

Teammates from McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, Tyler Ankrum and Daniel Hemric, rounded out the top five. Ross Chastain, who competes full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, led 33 laps in the Chevrolet No. 44 for Niece Motorsports but finished sixth.

Jake Garcia from ThorSport Racing finished seventh, followed by Chandler Smith from Front Row Motorsports, Grant Enfinger from CR7 Motorsports, and Kaden Honeycutt from Niece Motorsports, who recovered from a late penalty that had dropped him to 27th place.

With his third-place finish, Heim takes the championship lead with an eight-point advantage over defending champion Ty Majeski and 27 points over Chandler Smith, who is in third place.

Larson aims for a triple win in Miami

Larson, who will compete in all three of NASCAR's national series this weekend at the 1.5-mile track in South Florida, commented on the possibility of a triple win: "I felt like the Truck race would probably be the hardest to win, I don't have much experience in them, and the stages are typically shorter. I feel better about Xfinity and Cup, but the competition gets tougher as the weekend goes on, but we'll see. We're off to a good start."

The NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series will continue its season next Friday night at Martinsville Speedway with the Boys and Girls Club of the Blue Ridge 200 at 7:30 p.m. ET. Christian Eckes, now a rookie in the Xfinity Series, won this race last year.

Baptist Health 200 Results