With no positions to gain, why was Kyle Larson on track so late at Darlington?

Trailing the leader by 168 laps, Kyle Larson was involved in an accident that changed the outcome of the Cup race Sunday at Darlington. 

A driver on the track that far behind with a repaired car? That hadn’t been seen since 2017. And that's because the damaged vehicle policy (DVP) went into effect and teams only had a handful of minutes to repair their wrecked race cars. 

After wrecking on Lap 4, Larson’s team spent nearly two hours in the garage making repairs.

By the time he got back on track, Larson could not gain enough positions to earn additional points (36th, 37th and 38th can all earn one point, and the best he could do was finish 37th). He could have earned the point for the fastest lap, but with a damaged car, that wasn’t likely.

So, what exactly was Larson doing out there? 

"Just getting the nose fixed up as good as it was, giving us enough of a data point of how the car was driving that we could do some things to [learn]," Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels said after the race. "I'm not really sure you know [the first time the car requirements for] what NASCAR's take is on you come back in, you make minimum speed.

"Yes, I know there's no points to gain [for spots], ... but the way our team is built, we certainly want to come here and take the checkered flag. And the other thing we were learning, too, was with the pit cycles. Just different air pressure settings and a couple of the things we were doing with the heights of the car."

Larson tried to stay out of everyone’s way. When he saw Tyler Reddick battling Ryan Blaney for the lead, he slowed down and went low to avoid any potential contact with Reddick. But Bubba Wallace had such a good run coming from behind Larson, that he accidentally got into the back of