Kyle Larson looked like an entirely new Dirt Late Model driver by late Friday night at Vado Speedway Park's Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout presented by O’Reilly Auto Parts. And the irony is it took an utter gaffe to push the reset button on what’s otherwise been a tiring week for the Elk Grove, Calif., globetrotter.

A night after his spontaneous Chili Bowl Nationals entry in Tulsa, Okla., went by the wayside with two flips, Larson returned to Vado and went from 22nd to fifth in the 30-lap feature. And he did so aboard Kevin Rumley’s backup car was summoned after Larson junked the primary car in a miscalculated move battling Tyler Stevens on the last lap of the fourth heat.

The backup car, for whatever reason, fit all his needs.

“My car was really good the whole feature,” Larson said. “It was different between the two cars. We went to the backup car — the car we ended up racing the B main and A main — and it was way, way better than what I’ve had. It was a lot of fun to get to race and all that.

“Early in the race, you’re just stuck in traffic. I put together some good laps finally, then got racing (Tyler) Erb a few laps and messed up, stalled out. Yeah, there were a couple moments I wish I could have back because I could’ve gotten much farther up on that last restart. I’m just happy the car was good because I was pretty miserable on Wednesday and tonight before we made the switch.”

Larson added that he doesn’t “see why we would change” back to the primary car, and even went as far to say “that’s as good as I’ve felt in a Late Model.”

“Hopefully we can keep narrowing in on whatever that is, and we’re much better off,” he said. “We just need to start the nights better. Just qualifying so bad (16th in Group B on Wednesday).”

The inadvertent fix, meanwhile, is a two-edged sword because it didn’t come without drawing the ire of an “extremely frustrated” Stevens, who couldn’t continue the rest of the night after the run-in with Larson.

Tyler Stevens and Kyle Larson tangle in Friday's heat race action at Vado Speedway Park. (Tyler Rinken)

“Kyle’s a better racer than that,” Stevens said. “And it’s not like we’re racing for second or the lead, or even a transfer spot. We were both struggling, racing for sixth in a heat race, and coming into turn three coming to the checkered, he destroys me and tears his car up, too. It doesn’t make any sense from a racer’s standpoint why he would do that.

“From sixth to seventh, it’s one row in a B main. That’s all it was. It’s not like it was the end of the world. But instead he runs through me, and my car is headed to the car wash in a million pieces. And we have to start from scratch tomorrow. We’re a one-car operation.”

Larson acknowledged Stevens’s anger — “Yeah, I’m sure (he’s mad),” he said — and added that his aggressive move gone wrong in the final corner of the heat race “was frustration on my part for being slow.”

“He’d been running the top and I wasn’t quite sure if he was going to slide across or stop around the bottom,” Larson said. “I was trying to get another spot to move a little forward in the B because we were terrible at that point, and I climbed over his left-rear.”

Stevens further added, “I wish he had the decency to come over here and say, ‘Hey, man, sorry. I didn’t mean to get into you.’ But he won’t.

"I used to have an amazing amount of respect for him," he added. "And I respect what he does in a race car, 100 percent. But driving like that, in those situations, there’s no need for it.”

On Wednesday, Stevens fractured the orbital bone under his right eyelid after getting struck in the helmet by the airborne right-rear shock that came loose off Larson’s machine. Stevens said that his anger with Larson on Friday had nothing to do with Wednesday’s “freak event that nobody could control.”

He spent four hours Thursday at Southwest Eye Institute, where doctors ultimately diagnosed the condition. 

Stevens added that the ordeal “took a chunk out of my cornea,” expounding, “That’s the problem. If I covered my right eye, it’s just a big blur in my left. But with both eyes I can see well enough to race, no problem. It’s not 100 percent by no means. … It’s still pretty fuzzy in my right eye. And they said it would be for a couple weeks.”