Winning all three NASCAR national series races on a single weekend is indeed a tough task.
It has only been done twice in the history of the sport, and on both occasions, it was Kyle Busch who pulled it off. He did it at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2010, and he returned to the "Last Great Colosseum" and did it again in 2017.
Kyle Larson was attempting to do the same at the four-turn, 0.533-mile (0.858-kilometer) high-banked Bristol, Tennessee oval this weekend, but his bid was unfortunately derailed in his first start
Though he was able to overcome a pit road speeding penalty and work his way back through the field, he could only drive his No. 07 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet up to second place behind race winner Chandler Smith in Friday night's Truck Series race.
Larson is still set to compete for Hendrick Motorsports in Saturday's Xfinity Series race (5:00 p.m. ET on the CW Network), and obviously in Sunday's Cup Series race (3:00 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1), but his chances of pulling off a tripleheader sweep this year, barring any late additions to his Truck Series and Xfinity Series schedule, are no more.
And that highlights a harsh reality for Larson and two others.
Larson came oh-so-close to sweeping the race weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway last month. He overcame a spin to win the Truck Series race, and he was leading the Xfinity Series race by more than 16 seconds with only a handful of laps remaining.
Unfortunately for him, that's where things went wrong, and two series full-timers played an inadvertent role in preventing Larson from making history.
A single-car spin by Taylor Gray resulted in an overtime restart, and on that restart, Sam Mayer made contact with the back of Larson's car, dropping him down the order and ultimately costing him the win. He could only finish the race in fourth place, as it was reigning series Justin Allgaier who swiped the victory.
If there were ever any non-Cup Series drivers who absolutely didn't want to see Larson win the following afternoon's Cup Series race, they were Gray and Mayer.
Unfortunately for them, Larson did indeed win the Cup Series race, cementing their role in preventing the 2021 Cup champion from making history in a way that only one other driver ever has.
It's a harsh reality, but that's racing. Whenever there is a late restart, specifically an overtime restart, so much goes out the window, and that particular sequence of events at Homestead simply did not fall Larson's way.
To sweep a weekend tripleheader, everything needs to go right in all three races. Larson, for as talented as he is, even has some leeway, as seen with his ability to rally back from a spin and a penalty in his two Truck Series starts. But it just wasn't enough.