Kyle Larson excels at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with three wins since 2021. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
LAS VEGAS — Admittedly, Kyle Larson knows he and his No. 5 team are off to a slower start than usual with two top five finishes after four races.
Most teams would not mind those results and ranking 11th in the points standings after four races. Then again, the standards are higher for Larson and his Hendrick Motorsports brigade.
It has been a helter skelter start for the native of Elk Grove, California with an ominous kickoff in the 67th DAYTONA 500 followed by a strong performance at Atlanta. Then, a promising weekend at Circuit of the Americas in Del Valle, Texas, was derailed with a plethora of issues before battling hard to finish third at Phoenix last Sunday.
Despite the topsy turvy results, Larson recognizes his team’s consistently strong performance to keep him in contention.
“Daytona just was rough. Like we just were buried in the back the whole time. So that was frustrating to start your season off like that,” Larson said in his press conference on Saturday. “I would have rather been up front and got crashed, but never got to see the front. And then, yeah, Atlanta was good. You know, I was happy. I was like — oh, great. You know, I expected to go there and crash, and we got a good finish. So I felt like we were a week ahead of schedule.
“And then, you know, we went to COTA and had good speed and all that. I just didn’t do a great job behind the wheel. And then we had the right front wheel fall off and that buried us. And then finally had a chance to overcome it and then got spun. And then Phoenix last week, we just weren’t fast. Like we weren’t very good. But our team did an amazing job executing — pit stops, restarts, all of that stuff kept us in the hunt.”
Prior to Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Larson recognized the immediate need to string frontrunner results.
Kyle Larson starts 10th in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
“I just feel like we haven’t had consistency really to start, whether that be kind of everything coming together,” he observed. “So I’m hoping that this week, a track that we have success at in the past, we can kind of put it all together and you have a solid weekend. And then go to another track next week where I’m really confident at and try and just put a few good races in a row together.”
Las Vegas has catalyzed Larson’s championship runs since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021. He won that year’s Pennzoil 400 en route to nine more victories and the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
In 2023, Larson captured a pivotal Playoff race victory to secure a Championship 4 spot at Phoenix, placing runner-up to Ryan Blaney by a single point. Last year, Larson tallied another Pennzoil 400 victory for the first of six wins to place sixth in the championship standings.
At a track like Las Vegas, Larson knows his team prepares fast cars and he can capitalize with the track’s multiple grooves. Sometimes, it might mean pushing it to the edge on the high groove or aero-blocking to stave off the pursuing driver in the late stages of a race.
Sunday’s race at the 1.5-miler and the following weekend’s date at Homestead-Miami may be a telltale barometer on where the No. 5 team truly stands amongst this year’s challengers.
Following these two weekends at the high speed intermediates, the series heads to Martinsville Speedway, the 0.526-mile short track that proves challenging for the versatile racer.
Kyle Larson hopes that he and his No. 5 team can find the consistency soon that has made them a championship threat each season since 2021. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
“I would say as a team and organization, we’re much better at Martinsville than we are at Phoenix,” he observed. “We had hopes of being better than we were at Phoenix across the board [with] the four of us. William [Byron] was pretty decent, but the rest of us were pretty average.
“I feel like when we go to Martinsville, we have a package that we can probably look back on and build our car off of that and be competitive. So, I don’t have as much concern going to Martinsville as I do Phoenix right now. But Martinsville is Martinsville, and it is a tough track still for me, even though it’s crazy to think that it’s probably our statistically best track on this circuit.”
The numbers may trend favorably for Larson at Martinsville where his average finish is 6.5 in the past eight races. However, his confidence is near its maximum at Las Vegas with an average finish of 9.4 in 17 prior starts.
Starting 10th from the field, Larson hopes to secure an early season win to build upon the consistency that has been patented with his No. 5 team in the past four years.
“Las Vegas has been a great track for us since I joined the No. 5 HendrickCars.com team,” Larson said in a team press release. “We got our first win here together and we have added a couple more since then. I think we have a couple runner-up finishes, also.
“The track is great but also getting to come to a cool city is fun, as well. This is probably in my top-three places to come to.”
