Kyle Larson prepares to defend his Brickyard 400 victory at Indianapolis after qualifying 13th. (Photo: AJ Sylvia | The Podium Finish)
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Kyle Larson heads into Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway looking to defend his 2024 crown. The defending race champion will start 13th and enters Sunday’s race third in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.
Larson’s history at Indianapolis lends confidence. In his seven prior oval starts at the Speedway, he claimed one win—the 2024 race—and logged two top‑five and four top‑10 finishes, with an average finish of 13.9 and average starting spot of 12.3. Last year’s dramatic victory came in double overtime, the result of late‑race opportunism and fuel strategy as he stormed from deep in the field to take the checkered flag over Ryan Blaney.
This season Larson has added three wins—including races at Homestead, Kansas and Bristol—to his résumé and ranks third in the Cup standings just behind Chase Elliott and William Byron, trailing by under 40 points amid a tight points battle.
Larson expressed optimism about his prospects at Indy ahead of his first on track sessions.
“I’m just happy to be back,” Larson said during Friday’s pre-race press conference. “Hopefully our car is good again. I believe it should be as fast, if not better, than it was last year. Hopefully we’ll have a good practice session, a good qualifying run and be able to execute a good race.”
Last week at Dover, he delivered a strong performance, driving from 25th to finish fourth.
“Yeah, it was good. And I knew that Dover would be a great opportunity for us to have a day like that, where we could just be clean all race long; have speed and have things work out,” he recalled. “But yeah, I mean, it got a little sketchy there when [Christopher] Bell spun. I thought I was going to get collected in that and be like — oh, well, just continuing on our bad finishes here. But no, it was good. So yeah, hopefully that’s the beginning of it kind of turning around for us. But we’ll see.”
Crew chief Cliff Daniels has been a stabilizing presence since Larson joined Hendrick Motorsports in 2021. In that time, Larson has won 25 races of his 32 Cup races with Daniels in the past five years.
Kyle Larson’s No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet sports the colors used for the #H1100 efforts. (Photo: AJ Sylvia | The Podium Finish)
Despite their successes, Larson knows Daniel’s approach and demeanor could be duplicated for any other driver, a testament to their unique chemistry and communication.
“I don’t know if he would be for everybody, but I really like it,” Larson observed. “I think he does a great job of keeping me focused and focused on the next task. When I sound mopey on the radio, he can kind of pick me up, too. He can also challenge me and pick out things that I’m not doing right, which I like. So having that relationship with your crew chief is important.
“Having trust between the two of you is important. And yeah, he’s a great leader. He works really hard at it. He’s really evolved his leadership, I think. He’s always been a great leader. But his leadership has evolved, even since 2021. He studies it. He works hard at it, and you can see it.”
Indianapolis presents unique challenges and nuances, something Larson has thought through in his time driving stock cars and and IndyCars in the past two years.
“Yeah, they are different. Overhead, they look similar. But I just think with kind of how the sun hits each corner and the wind direction and stuff, it can get different,” Larson offered. “Turn 1, I feel like is a pretty, for your balance anyways, a tight corner. It gets really kind of slick feeling off of turn one. Turn 2 can be similar. Turn 2 is easy to get kind of lost on your entry because it’s a much wider visual corner with less grass and stuff over there, so it’s easy to kind of get lost and miss your turn‑ins and stuff over there.
“Turns 3 and 4 have more grip than this end of the track. Turn 3 has got some bumps and it just feels like a faster corner. And then Turn 4 is probably the easiest corner just because I feel like it gets the most shade and stuff and has the most grip. But yeah, each corner is definitely a lot different.”
He also embraces the spectacle of Indy, even with his early morning arrival to the 2.5-mile superspeedway.
“I feel like when I drive in here at night and looking at the top of the Pagoda and seeing the flags all lit up is really cool,” he said. “It’s great to be back here in Indy and back in a stock car. Hopefully, I’ll do a much better job than I did in May. But yeah, it’s a privilege to get to run here and race this facility. I would love nothing more than to have a good run and hopefully kind of put the bow on the double stuff with another Brickyard 400 win.”
That “double stuff” refers back to last year’s victory, in which Larson made aggressive, late moves to win.
Kyle Larson hopes his No. 5 Chevrolet can return to Indianapolis’ victory lane after a hard day’s work in the Brickyard 400. (Photo: AJ Sylvia | The Podium Finish)
“It was nice being able to be on offense throughout that run last year. It was still difficult to pass. I had to make a lot of super late moves to get those passes done,” he shared. “But yeah, thankfully, the pace was just slow enough. It kind of kept the accordion on entry a little bit there.
“We were able to be really aggressive and make some of those moves. But I had gotten stuck once I got to third or fourth… I wasn’t going to be able to pass my way to the lead. Tires had kind of equaled out at that point and whatnot. And then, yeah, I just got some good fortunes, so it worked out.”
Today’s race also represents the crown jewel of the inaugural NASCAR In‑Season Challenge—the winner of the bracket-style mini‑tournament earns $1 million, with Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon the remaining contenders. Though Larson is not in the final two, the overall stakes and media attention add to the drama at Indy this Sunday.
With starting position 13th, Larson must navigate traffic and manage strategy to reclaim the Brickyard crown. His average start this season aligns perfectly with that spot and, at a track known for its variable corner grip and wind effects, consistency and timing will be key.
He trails only a handful of drivers in the season standings—Byron and Elliott, his Hendrick Motorsports teammates—and this race could swing the points race dramatically as the regular season winds down. Larson’s momentum after wins in Dover, Bristol and Kansas gives his team reason to believe they have the speed and confidence needed to execute at Indy.
If his car is as strong as he anticipates, and if Daniels continues to keep him sharp, Larson could once again race to the front—and perhaps pull off a rare Brickyard repeat. At Indy, where precision meets opportunity, the defending champ is aiming to turn his history and these three weeks of momentum into Brickyard history.
