LAS VEGAS — Kyle Larson entered Sunday‘s South Point 400 as the favorite to win and advance to the Championship 4 for a second straight season. After all, the No. 5 Chevrolet had dominated the previous two races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

During the opening stage, Larson seemed to have a top-five car but faded to 10th at the end of the stage while Toyota drivers Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell drove through traffic after a restart late in the stage. Early in the second stage, Larson remained a threat and reached second position before his race went haywire.

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While Larson made a green-flag pit stop on Lap 125, the No. 5 team froze while changing four tires. The rear tire carrier wasn‘t certain that the right-rear wheel was secure on the car and alerted crew chief Cliff Daniels. The crew went back around to the right side to tighten the wheel after starting service on the left-side tires. Through the disarray, the left-rear tire was never changed and Larson had to make an additional pit stop.

“It‘s a very awkward circumstance because in that moment, I have to call out and flag that we do have an issue on the right rear; we‘re halfway through our left-side operation,” Daniels said. “The changer‘s second-guessing themselves in what they needed to finish for the left-side operation and clean that up. Ultimately, we had a new tire put on the left-front and we did not get a new tire put on the left-rear.

“It’s tough and now when you look at it in reverse, it‘s kind of like, ‘Wow, how did we not get that right?‘ I understand where there was some confusion in the moment. The guys now are smarter because we have that experience and know how to handle that moving forward.”

By not getting a new left-rear tire on the car, there was no option but to pit a second time. The additional trip down pit road put Larson nearly two laps down instead of vying to remain on the lead lap with only one costly stop.

When the field reset at the end of Stage 2, Larson battled hard with Ty Gibbs, who sped on pit road, for the free pass position. When Gibbs spun to bring out the race‘s final caution on Lap 192, the No. 5 car was awarded the free pass.

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Some drivers stretched their fuel mileage to the end of the race after the final restart, but Larson pitted once more and ended the race in 11th position. He sits third on the playoff grid, 35 points above the elimination line — two points more than his margin entering the Vegas event.

“Extremely hard,” Larson said of his Vegas race, which included a slight front-end blemish from debris after Austin Dillon’s crash in Stage 1. “We had a bad end of the first stage and then had to fix the damage that we had. Then, I was like, ‘OK, we‘re going to have a good day here.’ I think I got to eighth before the green-flag cycle. I was much better than the guys in front of us and thought we would finish the end of the stage in third or fourth and then we had the biggest mess of a pit stop I think I‘ve ever seen. That was just unfortunate.

Daniels was pleased with the poise Larson showed to drive back through the field.

“I was really proud of Kyle, really proud of the team for still coming back after what kind of a mess that was,” he said. “Everybody stuck together. Certainly, wanted better than an 11th-place finish, but that was probably one of the hardest fought 11th-place finishes we‘ve had.”

In the grand scheme, Larson said he knows how solid his No. 5 team is. He indicated that this was a singular mishap that won‘t happen again, with the No. 5 team having a “deep notebook” of things it practices.

“They‘ve won me a lot of races, so I think that‘s what helped me stay calm,” added Larson. “I make a lot more mistakes than the rest of our team does. That allows me to be calm. It was a bit of a mess, but we will assess it, learn from it and it will never happen again, I know that.”