Kyle Larson had everything going for him on that Lap 148 restart. Fresh tires. Clear track. A car that could win. Then John Hunter Nemechek’s No. 42 came drifting up the track in Turns 3 and 4, and everything fell apart fast. Larson got squeezed toward the wall. Riley Herbst went aggressive on the low side. Suddenly the field was four-wide: Herbst, Ryan Preece, Alex Bowman, and Larson, with nowhere to go.
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Kyle Larson and his Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman both collected the outside wall. Bowman’s hopes of a competitive finish came undone right there. Larson broke a rear toe link, came back out laps down, and finished 33rd. When Nemechek’s team radioed over an explanation, Larson had four words for it. “Yeah. Yeah, cool. Professional.” Nemechek reached out after the race. Then he talked to Claire B. Lang and did not try to spin it.
“Not trying to make excuses whatsoever,” Nemechek said. “I got to be better. My apologies are out to Kyle and the whole 5 team. He was on four tires, had a great run through one and two, and not something that I wanted to happen.”
Iowa wasn’t the first time John Hunter Nemechek found himself in Kyle Larson’s way. The defining moment between them came at the 2023 Shriners Children’s 200 at Darlington in the Xfinity Series. They went door-to-door, racing for the win on the final lap, and bounced off each other coming to the checkered flag. Larson got there first. Nemechek spun into the inside wall and settled for fifth.
This time, though, Nemechek ended up knocking Larson from eighth to tenth in the standings, with the HMS driver adding another race to a winless streak going back to May 2025. Larson did not hide how he felt.
“Is he not able to hold a straight line like normal?” he said over the radio.
Nemechek heard it, and did not argue with any of it. “He has every right to be upset. I would be upset if I was in his shoes as well.”
What stood out about Nemechek’s response was who he was apologising to. When Nemechek joined Chip Ganassi Racing in 2018, Kyle Larson was already there. He was the guy Nemechek watched and learned from. That history did not make the Iowa wreck easier to swallow for either of them. It made it harder.
“Kyle was one of the first guys that I looked up to when I went to Ganassi in 2018,” Nemechek said. “I’ve learned a lot from him, and he’s definitely a really talented race car driver.”
He reached out, explained what happened, and took the hit publicly. Whether Kyle Larson wants to talk it through is up to him.