Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott have gone over what happened near the end of last weekend’s race at Auto Club Speedway, and Larson believes it went well.
“It was good to have a conversation and good to hopefully move along from it,” Larson said after qualifying second at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “It went well. Honestly, better than I anticipated. He’s a good teammate and I’m going to do my part to be a great teammate each and every week, and hopefully, we never have any instances happen like what happened last week.”
Larson met with Elliott Saturday in Las Vegas. The reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion explained his side of the contact from last weekend, where when he made a move to the right to prepare for entry into Turn 1 while battling Joey Logano, Elliott wound up hitting the wall. Elliott tried to go high on Larson and make it a three-wide battle for the race lead.
“I felt like he was (understanding),” Larson said. “I was encouraged by that. Like I said, he’s always been a great teammate. And we’re both young; we’re both going to be fighting for wins together. Hopefully, nothing like that happens again.”
Fox Sports reporter Bob Pockrass tweeted that Elliott appreciated Larson’s apology.
While it was the first time Larson and Elliott had spoken in person about the incident, it wasn’t the first time it’d been brought up since Sunday. Larson revealed that team owner Rick Hendrick called a meeting with all four of his teams earlier this week. However, it was done virtually because of the travel schedules on the West Coast, which is why Larson didn’t see Elliott until Saturday’s activities.
“(He) just kind of reiterated his expectations with us drivers,” Larson said. “It’s good to get those reminders every now and then and continue to race good in the future with each other.”
It was the first time that Larson can remember in his short tenure as an HMS driver that Rick Hendrick participated.
“He’s been to competition meetings, stuff like that, and we’ve had multiple meetings about different things, but as far as racing stuff, that’s the first one I can remember him getting involved in,” said Larson. “I think we all know his expectation, and after the incident last week, it was good for him to get involved again and tell us what the expectations are.”
