Two-time and defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson looks to secure his first victory of the 2026 season this Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
LAS VEGAS — Kyle Larson has spent much of the young 2026 season in a position he grew to despise during his championship-winning campaign last year: watching the back of other cars.
But as the NASCAR Cup Series prepares for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the two-time and defending champion is leaning on the same “resiliency” that defined his march to the 2025 title. Despite entering the weekend ranked 10th in points and still searching for his first Cup win of the year, Larson sent a clear message to the field Saturday by winning the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race in a dominant late-race surge.
Now, he is looking to translate that momentum into a fourth career Cup victory at the 1.5-mile desert oval. For Larson, the goal is simple: find the “clean air” that has eluded him through the first four weeks of the season and remind the garage why the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet still wears the champion’s crown.
“You can’t be satisfied with what you did the year before and expect that you’re going to be just as good or better going forward,” Larson told The Podium Finish in an exclusive “In the Hot Seat” interview. “Every year is a little bit different… you just gotta keep working hard, and that’s what we’ll do.”
The Anatomy of Resilience
Larson’s 2025 championship was not the dominant wire-to-wire performance many expected. While he eventually hoisted the trophy in Phoenix, he admits the journey through the summer months was a mental and physical grind. It was a “rut,” as he described it, that tested the fortitude of the No. 5 team and forced them to dig deeper than they ever had during his first title run in 2021.
“It just didn’t seem like we were going to be celebrating like that throughout the summer,” Larson admitted. “We started off the year really good, and then throughout the summer, we just kind of got into a rut and couldn’t really find our way out of it. But we continued to work really hard. And once the playoffs came around, we finally saw an uptick in performance.”
That experience is serving as a blueprint for his current situation in 2026. Through the first month of the season, Larson has found himself in a similar holding pattern. While he has shown flashes of speed, the results haven’t quite matched the effort, leaving him 116 points behind series leader Tyler Reddick. However, Larson isn’t panicking; he’s been in this foxhole before.
“I think for us, like I said, the summer was difficult,” Larson reflected. “I think a lot of times it’d be easy to overreact and venture off from what your processes are. But I think we always trusted the people and the processes and yeah, that’s what kind of led us to get back on the right track.”
The Professor and the Pupil
Kyle Larson confers with crew chief Cliff Daniels (center) and interior mechanic and tire specialist Cesar Villanueva. Larson credits Daniels’ evolving leadership for the No. 5 team’s continued success. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
A significant part of that process is the evolving leadership of crew chief Cliff Daniels. Known for his intense “book study” sessions and meticulous preparation, Daniels pushed Larson to grow beyond his natural, raw talent. In their time together, the relationship has moved from a traditional driver-crew chief dynamic into something more akin to a high-level academic partnership.
Larson joked about his struggle to keep up with Daniels’ reading list, admitting he sometimes uses modern tools to keep pace with his crew chief’s voracious appetite for knowledge.
“I don’t read as fast as Cliff,” Larson laughed. “If you’re ever around Cliff, I will fill out my post-race notes and he’ll be done with the paragraph that I’ve written before I’ve halfway through it. He can probably get through a book over twice as fast as me and process it all. So no, I haven’t finished all the books, but usually before our little book study sessions, I’ll ChatGPT the main points from it. I get the gist of it.”
Despite the shortcuts on the reading list, the “gist” of those lessons—focusing on intentional team bonding and internal goals—has clearly permeated the shop. Larson credits Daniels with keeping the team from “throwing the towel in” during the stressful moments of 2025, specifically during the Phoenix finale where a flat tire nearly ended their championship hopes.
“Cliff has always been a great leader, but he’s always evolving,” Larson noted. “I think what’s made him great is he’s always evolving as a leader… He’s been doing some book study things. I think we did that in the midst of our struggles. And I think that really allowed us to kind of focus in on who we are as competitors and people and keep us on the right path.”
The Steve Young Path
No matter the adept driving and savvy, Kyle Larson can count on the pit crew in any NASCAR division to contend for wins. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
Larson’s career trajectory is often compared to great athletes who had to wait for the right machinery to match their talent. During the interview, the comparison to NFL legend Steve Young was raised—a player who had to earn his stripes in difficult situations before finding the perfect system in San Francisco.
For Larson, that “difficult situation” was his formative years at Chip Ganassi Racing. While he won races there, he was often asked to over-drive the equipment to keep up with the powerhouses of the sport.
“I’m always grateful for my time at Ganassi,” Larson reflected. “I think that definitely helped give me a good work ethic because you didn’t have the resources or the speed all the time to go challenge for wins, but you’re trying to every week. So it made you push really hard. I was able to carry that over to Hendrick, but then fine-tune things and get better quicker and then have the equipment and setups and people to naturally make things a little easier on me.”
Now, with two championships in his trophy case, Larson is no longer just “trying” to challenge; he is the standard. Yet, he maintains that the chip on his shoulder hasn’t disappeared. It has simply changed form. He no longer cares about the “outside noise” regarding his drafting ability or track record; his motivation is entirely internal.
“I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I pay way less attention to kind of what outside noise is out there,” he said. “I just try to stay focused on myself and what our team’s got going on. I think that just winning in general probably motivates us as a team.”
A History of Sin City Success
To understand Larson’s confidence heading into Sunday, one must look at his historical dominance at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Larson’s first win for Hendrick Motorsports came at this very track in March 2021, a victory that served as the catalyst for his 10-win championship season.
He followed that up with a playoff win in the fall of 2023 and a masterclass performance in the 2024 Pennzoil 400. Las Vegas has quietly become a home away from home for the Elk Grove, California, native. The track’s progressive banking and abrasive surface reward drivers who can search for grip across multiple lanes, a skill Larson honed on the dirt tracks of the Midwest.
“I think every year evolves,” Larson explained. “Every year is a little bit different, whether maybe small or big changes. And I think that’s what makes our team—all of the teams in the sport—good is you’re always kind of evolving with the times and finding new ways to be successful.”
On Sunday, Larson will start fifth, having posted a qualifying lap of 185.548 mph. While he sits behind a quartet of Toyotas, his ability to manage a long run, as seen in his Saturday O’Reilly win, remains his greatest weapon.
Legacy in the Making
Kyle Larson wants to inspire the next generation with their dreams, whether in racing or not. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
At 33, Larson is in the absolute prime of his career. He is no longer just a “dirt guy” or a “stock car guy”; he is a generational talent whose impact is being felt by the next wave of racers. He notes with pride how the industry has shifted to embrace multi-discipline drivers—a change he largely catalyzed.
“I feel like I’ve already had somewhat of an impact on other racers coming up,” Larson said. “I see a lot more people not being so committed to one sort of form of racing. And that’s something I’m proud of. I see a guy like Kyle Busch… sending his son down this path of majority dirt racing. I think that’s pretty cool.”
Larson’s legacy, however, is being written one Sunday at a time. While he hopes his children, Owen and Cooper, recognize the “sacrifice and work ethic” required to be the best, he remains firmly focused on the present. He acknowledges that being a champion requires being away from home, but he hopes the results speak for themselves.
“I hope they recognize that already, but I hope they continue to realize that and I hope that they can instill that mindset in themselves,” Larson said. “Although this sport is my hobby, it’s more than a hobby; it’s my job and my life and I want to be really good at it.”
Sunday’s Outlook
Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 represents more than just another race on the 36-event calendar. It is an opportunity for the No. 5 team to prove that the “rut” of early 2026 is over. With three previous wins at this facility and a fresh trophy from Saturday’s performance, Larson enters Sunday as the favorite to break the Toyota stranglehold.
If he can find the “clean air” early and manage his tires as effectively as he did on Saturday, the rest of the Cup Series field may find themselves exactly where Larson was for much of 2025: watching the No. 5 Chevrolet pull away into the desert haze.
On Sunday in Las Vegas, the work begins at the green flag.
