Second place sucks. Second place in the Monster Energy All-Star Race when $1 million is on the line sucks a lot more.

Just ask Kyle Larson.

Larson went the Donny Schatz route after finishing second in the All-Star Race (for the second straight year) Saturday night. Opening his post-race press conference, Larson referenced an interview he saw Schatz, a sprint car driver, recently give.

“He (Schatz) said, second sucks ass, and today sucks ass,” Larson said. “That sucks, but we had a dominant car all race. Initially I thought our pit crew struggled on that last stop but our jack post broke off at some point throughout the race, so the jackman had to make a couple more pumps to get the car up and it just slowed the stop down enough we got bat off pit road by three cars.

“That was kind of the difference in the race for us. Had a lot of speed, restarted fifth and was able to get by Jimmie (Johnson) there that last lap and get to second. Thought we had a great shot in the All-Star Race but didn’t work out that way.”

With the highest average finish of the 10 cars who made it to the final round, Larson led the field down pit road. He left pit road fourth and lined up fifth for the restart after Brad Keselowski stayed out. A 10-lap sprint wasn’t enough for Larson to catch eventual winner Kyle Busch.

Larson might have had the best car at Charlotte Motor Speedway, though. Friday night he went mistake free in two rounds of qualifying that included a four-tire pit stop with no pit road speed limit and grabbed the pole. He then dominated the first two stages by leading every lap on his way to winning each stage.

When the No. 42 was out front, Larson was untouchable. Had it not been for pit road, he might have been the winner. When asked if he should have been, Larson said no. He also understood the driver who had the lead and the clean air on the final restart was likely to run way with the race.

“We had the car to be the winner,” Larson said. “It’s just racing. A bad pit stop – I’m not even going to call it a bad pit stop because of our issue – but when you run into bad luck or problems like that, you don’t win the race. You have to be perfect to win a Cup race; even an Xfinity race you have to be perfect, especially a Cup race, though. Tonight, we just weren’t 100 percent perfect – we were almost there and we’ll get better and try and win again next year.”