Kevin Harvick remains baffled by Kyle Larson losing a wheel at Texas

As Kevin Harvick was calling last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, there was one moment that baffled him.

The No. 5 of Kyle Larson had one of, if not the best car at points during the afternoon. That’s until his wheel came clean off, and ruined the momentum he’d been building towards his second win of the season.

On the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Harvick tried to make sense of it, but it still remains a mystery to the former NASCAR Cup Series champion what exactly transpired with the No. 5 at Texas.

“The oddest one of the weekend, I guess there was two of them. I guess the socket getting stuck on the lug nut with the No. 54, but Larson running 13, 14 laps, and then the wheel falling off,” Harvick stated. “So I’m sure they’ll have some sort of explanation, as they go back and dissect it. The teams are very good at going back and dissecting everything, to understand what just happened in in these situations. So they’ll have an understanding, as they go through the week, of everything that went wrong and be able to explain it better than I will. But still, it’s still strange that it fell off after 13, 14 laps.

“Now I know it had the load and everything on the on the right side tire to keep the tire on, but that’s a that’s a weird one, when it falls off like that. And at that point, it just destroyed everything that he was dragging off underneath the car, on his way back to pit road. He never, never really got back up to speed. He was back there with Jimmie Johnson, and we had some in-car camera. At one point, they were just slamming into the side of each other. Door-banging. I don’t know what happened, but it was entertaining to watch.”

Alas, the tire falling off really put a dent in Larson’s afternoon, as he went from having a potential race-winning vehicle, to one that was stuck in the back of the field throughout the afternoon. However, it’s not all bad, at least his teammate in Chase Elliott was able to find victory lane.

Still, the competitor Kyle Larson is won’t let him be satisfied with that result. Superspeedway racing hasn’t come easy to him, but as NASCAR moves to Talladega this weekend, maybe he can get something going when the green flag waves during the GEICO 500.