Kyle Larson explained his race-winning pass on Ryan Timms to earn his third straight victory in the Front Row Challenge at Oskaloosa.

 With 5 laps to go, Larson sent his car into the three and then slid up in front of Timms and over his nose wing to get the lead. Larson would then quickly pull away from Timms and sail to the win over the final five laps. Meanwhile, Timms would get passed by Corey Day on the final lap of the race as he struggled with the damage caused by Larson’s move.

In his victory lane interview with FloRacing, Larson said, “He was getting nervous in 1 and 2 and started making mistakes and allowing me to build runs. It was just strung out so you gotta get going. I’m sure that wasn’t the cleanest move. I’m sure if anybody’s followed his career we’ve seen him make a lot of mistakes as well. His car owner’s upset at me, which is fine, but at least get my race right. I’m not Chinese. I’m Japanese.”

🏁 @KyleLarsonRacin describes contact and battle for the win with @RyanTimms_5T in #FrontRowChallenge Monday at Oskaloosa. 🏆 pic.twitter.com/Z7CyxtyElt

— FloRacing (@FloRacing) August 11, 2026

Larson shared more details in an interview with Connor Ferguson of Always Race Day following the conclusion of the race, “You’re never going in there to make contact with somebody on a half mile. I felt like it was going to be tight, no doubt. But yea, I mean once you’re kind of committed, you’re committed. If I bail at all, I’m probably going to hit him in the left rear, which is not good too, or obviously a lot worse.”

“I wish I would have made the pass clean and not gotten into his front bumper, front nose wing,” he continued. “I haven’t seen it, but I seen his nose wing’s collapsed on him. I’m guessing he got into my rear bumper. So that’s unfortunate.”

“But I knew we were coming down to the end. I didn’t know when the white flag was coming and I didn’t know how many more opportunities I had.”

After discussing how he did not want the cautions, Larson said, “I was able to throw a couple moves at him, but just wasn’t close enough to get by. So then it was just coming down to the end and there was less cars on the track so I felt like there was not going to be a whole lot of traffic up in front of us. So, yeah, went for it.”

Larson shared even more details with Jeremy Elliott of SprintCarUnlimited, “He made a couple mistakes in a row catching the cushion in the middle of 1 and 2. And I could tell he was scared of me probably being close to him and he started shortcutting his entry to 3. And it was just kind of killing his run. So, I was really smelling blood there. He was just backing his momentum up and just going to open the door eventually. He cracked it open and I guess I opened it wide up.”

“I felt the contact. I haven’t seen a replay. So I don’t know if I got him in the right rear to left front or rear bumper to front wing or whatever,” he continued. “I just got a big run off of 2 and we kinda had a lapper up ahead and I felt like I needed to just take advantage of the run that I had just because the field seemed smaller at that point with the reds and people just pulling in. So I felt like we weren’t going to catch much traffic. So I just didn’t what what was going to be ahead in the laps upcoming. Like I said, I saw the opening and kind of shot the gap and was probably not clear, but we had to do what we had to do to get the win there.”

NEXT: 65th Knoxville Nationals Brings Sprint Car World To Iowa