Photo by: Jonathan Ferrey

Kyle Larson boldly took advantage of a late-race restart to secure his third consecutive win in the Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

Larson restarted fourth in overtime after Michael McDowell and Paul Menard spun, but gained the lead after taking it four wide in his No. 42 Target Chevrolet with Matt Kenseth, Erik Jones, and Martin Truex Jr. Larson led just the final two laps to earn the fourth win of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career.

“Awesome finish for us” Larson said, “We definitely didn’t have the car that we had here the last two times we won, but we kept fighting. Probably even harder than we did in those other two wins.”

Larson joins NASCAR Hall of Fame members David Pearson and Bill Elliott to win three consecutive races at the two-mile track.

Truex finished second .310 seconds behind Larson after leading 57 laps.

“We got beat fair and square,” Truex said. “That’s the way it goes sometimes. Double‑file restarts are tricky, and I had good restarts all day I felt like, and we had that red flag for the first time and really just sat there while I got the tires cold and then only had one lap to come to the green and get some heat back in them, and I just struggled getting going, just spun the tires. I didn’t really expect it because I hadn’t had any trouble with that all day.”

Erik Jones finished third, followed by Ryan Newman and Trevor Bayne. Chris Buescher finished sixth, his third top-10 finish within four weeks.

The race remained quiet, with Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. earning the stage victories, until Lap 139 when the No. 5 of Kasey Kahne slid up the race track and collected Joe Gibb Racing’s Daniel Suarez.

Suarez and Kahne finished 37th and 38th, respectively.

The MENCS head to Bristol, Tennessee on Saturday, July 19th for the 24th race of the season with three races remaining in the regular season. Truex leads Larson over a hundred points in the standings.

Don’t miss the Last Great Colosseum under the lights on July 19th at 7:30 p.m ET on NBC.