How NASCAR’s Kyle Larson has rewarded a leap of faith with sustained on-track success
When NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick extended a lifeline to the tenuous Cup career of Kyle Larson, he also handed the tarnished driver a family heirloom.
The No. 5 Chevrolet.
The No. 5 had been part of Hendrick Motorsports in all three NASCAR series since 1984, and it took on special meaning when Hendrick’s son, Ricky, competed in the No. 5 in the Xfinity Series in 2000, a year after he won Kansas Speedway’s inaugural NASCAR race in the trucks series.
Ricky Hendrick, then 21, became the youngest driver to win a trucks series race to that point. Ricky eventually moved from the driver’s seat to an executive position with Hendrick Motorsports and died in an airplane crash outside Martinsville, Va., in October 2004.
So when Rick Hendrick signed Larson in the offseason, the decision to put him in the No. 5 was a leap of faith. Larson, 29, had been fired by Chip Ganassi Racing in April 2020 and suspended by NASCAR for the rest of the season for uttering a racial slur while iRacing during the 2020 pandemic.
Larson, given a fresh start in some of the sport’s best equipment, has rewarded Hendrick handsomely by winning a career-best and series-most eight races, including the last two, heading into the Hollywood Casino 400 on Sunday at Kansas Speedway.
By winning last week at Texas, Larson became the first driver assured of advancing to the season-ending Championship Four race in Phoenix on Nov. 7.
Larson has run the blue and white paint scheme used by Ricky Hendrick in 20 races this season and will continue to do so for the rest of the season.
“When I thought about it this year, the 5 was our first number,” reflected Hendrick, who put the number on hiatus following Kasey Kahne’s departure in 2017. “I was super excited to bring it back. Then to run Ricky’s paint scheme on it, that was kind of like icing on the cake.
“Then to see the car run like it does, and Kyle do the job, Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) do the job he’s doing … to have this many victories, to see that car back on track, it never gets old.”
‘A much more mature person’
Until this season, Larson, best known for his prowess and prodigious year-round schedule on dirt tracks, never won more than four Cup races in a season during his eight years at Ganassi. His best finish in the standings was sixth in 2019.
Placed in a Hendrick car alongside reigning Cup champion Chase Elliott, rising stars Alex Bowman and William Byron, not to mention having the company’s institutional knowledge and notebooks from the likes of seven-time champion Johnson and four-time champion Jeff Gordon, Larson has turned his career around, on and off the track.
“I feel like I’m a much more mature person on and off the racetrack, behind the wheel, not behind the wheel,” Larson said at the start of the playoffs. “I think through all the experience of growing up made me ultimately just better all around.”
While serving his suspension, Larson, of Elk Grove, Cal., completed sensitivity training and maintained his hectic schedule of racing Sprint cars, midgets and late models.
“Getting to race as much as I did last year and contend — I raced 96 times, something like that, and won 46,” he said. “Putting yourself in position like that, it makes me a much mentally stronger driver these days, much more experienced driver. It’s definitely been a crazy couple of years, but I’m thankful that I’m in the opportunity I’m in now.”
Without Hendrick’s intervention, Larson might still be sliding around on dirt tracks in rural America instead of under the bright lights and on the speedways of NASCAR Cup racing.
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Larson said of what life might have been without Hendrick. “Right now I’d be twiddling my thumbs in Indiana waiting to race at Lawrenceburg …
“I was happy doing what I was doing last year, but I always had the goal of getting back to the Cup Series and didn’t really think it was a realistic thing throughout last summer. Even when I was winning a lot, I just kind of accepted that this was my life, and I was going to have a blast doing it and wasn’t going to regret anything at that point.
“It all kind of came together, and yeah, for sure it’s transformed my life. Getting back into the Cup Series and getting a second opportunity at the highest form of American auto racing is something that I don’t think normally happens. Just very thankful for it and want to take full advantage of it.”
Hendrick, a former driver and team owner since 1984, who has won 13 Cup championships with Terry Labonte, Gordon, Johnson and Chase Elliott, recognized Larson’s talent but was surprised he was so good so soon.
“Some of the moves he makes, what he can do with a car in different situations, find a place to run on the track …” Hendrick said of Larson, the first Hendrick Motorsports driver to win eight races in a season since Johnson won 10 in his championship season of 2007. “I knew he was talented, but you see him in sprint cars and midgets and everything else; he races almost three or four times a week, but the guy is one of the hungriest drivers that I’ve ever seen.
“He’s been through a lot …. And he just eats, sleeps and drinks racing. I’ve never seen anybody more intense that wants to race every minute of every day, and he wants to win. When you can climb in any kind of car and go to a track and win … I think he’s made a statement of how much talent he has.”
‘We have to win at Kansas’
Larson may be assured of his first appearance in the Championship Four, but his crew chief doesn’t plan to coast through the final two races of the Round of Eight: at Kansas on Sunday and Martinsville on Oct. 31.
“Even though we’re locked in, I’m sure my team is going to get a little grumpy at me because I’m going to walk in and tell them we have to win Kansas,” Daniels said. “That’s just the mentality that we’ve had all year, so we’ll keep it going.”
Larson has yet to win in 13 starts at Kansas. He has three top-five finishes, including a second n 2014 for Ganassi. But after leading a race-high 132 laps in his first attempt for Hendrick in May, he came in 19th.
If Larson leads 54 more laps this season, he will break NASCAR’s single-season record for laps led since the Cup series went to 36 points races in 2001. He has led 2,267 laps this season, trailing only Gordon’s 2,320 laps in 2001 and Kevin Harvick’s 2,294 in 2015.
“That would be really, really cool,” Larson said. “It’s definitely a goal of mine. It’s not like something I am upset about if I don’t lead any laps in a race or anything, but once I am leading, I want to stay in the lead to help catch that record or whatever.
“But you have to have a fast race car to do that, and our race car has been really good all season long.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2021 at 10:04 AM.