After a summer of struggles and questions, Kyle Larson feels good about what he and his Hendrick Motorsports team have done leading up to Sunday’s Round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway.
Larson enters the weekend holding the final transfer spot to the title race. He’s 36 points ahead of teammate William Byron, the first driver below the cutline.
After starting the season with three wins in the first 12 races, the summer was not as kind to Larson and his team. Starting with the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, Larson had seven top-10 finishes in 17 races, but he also had six finishes of 28th or worse during that stretch.
Since then, Larson has been better. He has four top-10 finishes in the past five playoff races.
“I feel like we’re back to a very similar spot of where we were up to May,” Larson told reporters this week.
Still, Larson is winless in his last 22 races — tied for his longest winless streak since joining Hendrick Motorsports ahead of the 2021 season.
Racing Insights gives Larson an 81.8% probability to advance to the title race (Christopher Bell is next at 81.5% and then Ryan Blaney at 12.5%).
Larson has finished in the top six in each of the last six races at Martinsville. He was fifth in the spring race and third in last year’s playoff race — losing the lead with 24 laps to go to a car on fresher tires.
Even with Larson’s Martinsville success, the historic half-mile track remains challenging to Larson.
“I think it definitely takes a little bit of time Saturday and you only get (25) minutes (of practice) so you’re typically running that practice run out,” Larson said. “Somewhere, midpoint of that run, I can get into a rhythm and then you don’t get in a car for another 24 hours. It’s like I need another 80 laps to get into a rhythm in the race.
“First stage is usually, (crew chief Cliff Daniels) will ask, well he’ll get on (the radio) and be like ‘Hey, you’re carrying … too much center corner speed.’ And then I’m playing around with stuff trying to figure out where in the hell the center of the corner actually is because it’s not in the center, it’s not in the middle where you think it is. … Then I’m sad and mopey at the end of the first stage and then I might kind of stop thinking and usually I get better.”
Larson enters the weekend one point behind Christopher Bell. Those behind them and below the cutline are Byron (-36 points), Joey Logano (-38), Blaney (-47) and Chase Elliott (-62). If any of those four wins Sunday, then Larson and Bell would be racing for the final transfer spot.
“Having us battle for championships together in the past together or trying to make the final four like this weekend, I think it’s cool, and I think it says a lot about the dirt racing community and drivers there outside of just us two,” Larson said of he and Bell. “We’ve had lots of battles, lots of first and second-place finishes, both in NASCAR now and dirt. … It’s still cool to race him on Sundays.”
