'He's one of the greats': NASCAR's Kyle Larson makes strong impression on Jeff Gordon
After his Cup Series win on the road course this past Sunday in the southern Sonoma Mountains of Sonoma County, California, Kyle Larson is seeing his life get back to normal.
That is if you can say running 38 Cup Series races and over 100 Sprint Car races per year all around the country is normal.
Larson has emerged as one of the greatest race car drivers in the country, considering the fact that the Elk Grove, California, native can seemingly master any type of race car chosen for him. He has numerous open-wheel short track victories as well as the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship with 26 career wins.
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In recent weeks, Larson competed in the Indianapolis 500 and finished 18th for Arrow-McClaren in a joint effort with Hendrick Motorsports after leading four laps.
In the closing laps at Sonoma Raceway, Larson discovered he had to work hard to get in position to win and had a very determined group of drivers determined to stop him.
Before getting to the lead, Larson would pass cars of fellow competitors, one, two at a time. He passed Chris Buecher and Martin Truex Jr. for the lead at Sonoma with eight laps remaining and held it until the end.
“… I was like, what are we, 22nd here, there weren't as many people that had pitted as I thought might,” Larson said. “I thought, ‘gosh, I don't know if I'm going to have time to — the distance that I'm going to have to the leaders, I just wouldn't know if I would have time to get there.
“I'm just out there clicking laps away. I felt like those guys pitted really early into that run, so then I ran out in the lead it felt like for a long time, and then I wasn't sure if people were on a three-stop strategy. So when I made my final pit stop and came out behind the guys that had pitted, it seemed like a lot earlier than me, it's like, ‘okay, this is going to be pretty easy. I beat Ross (Chastain), I didn't let him pass me….”
Larson realized through a radio communication with his team that he had his hands full.
“All these people are probably going to have to pit in front of me again,” Larson said. “Then I was asking, ‘am I racing these guys or what,' and they're like, ‘yeah, you're racing all of them.’ I thought, ‘oh, my God, I'm like 10th. I thought I was going to be faster for eight, 10 laps, but I didn't know once the tires came up to temp if they would equal out at some point because there were still 20-something laps left. It did, it definitely got closer to equaling out, but I still just had enough once I got to third and slowly was gaining on them and timed it out right to when Martin (Truex Jr.) got racing with him that I was kind of right there to capitalize.’”
Jeff Gordon, winner of 93 Cup Series races and a four-time champion, feels Larson is quite a talent as a road racer.
“Because he drives the wheels off of it,” Gordon said. “I think if you're making lap time, making good decisions, he was really good at making up positions on the restarts when he needed to. When those other guys came into pit and he's out there on a little bit older tires, maintaining lap times the way he was, those are just the things that great drivers do and do well, and he's one of the greats.”
Gordon addressed a trait about Larson that has endeared Larson to millions of race fans.
“I think it's obviously extracting the most speed out of a car,” Gordon said of Larson’s talent. “You don't have to know anything about a car to extract speed out of it. I think where it comes down to — where he probably is a little too humble in some of the things he says is that he's a key element of what the car is doing to be able to give that communication information back to (crew chief) Cliff (Daniels) and the team to get more out of it. There's a lot of data these guys can go off of, but still, if the car is loose or tight or whatever the balance is, he's got to give them that feedback in the race, and he gives great feedback….”
Gordon has been around Larson quite a bit over the years and is impressed with Hendrick Motorsports’ rising star.
“I would say he's very calm and cool through a lot of things, maybe even too much sometimes,” Gordon said. “But it is just sort of his personality and his upbringing and the way that he handles things, and that really works well for you when you've had a bad weekend or something that hasn't gone well.
“It works against you when you want to savor the victory and enjoy it because you're able to move past things fairly quickly, good and bad.”
Larson’s biggest mission for 2024 is to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship. To do so, wins and points are the key to his second-career Cup Series title and 15th for Hendrick Motorsports.
“I just prefer winning,” Larson said at Sonoma. “However you have to do that, whatever. I felt like being on offense, I was just able to make less mistakes throughout the day, and I think people recognized that we were on offense, too, so they didn't really race me too, too hard. My car was just really good in the brake zones because I was on fresher tires.
“…That part of it's fun, but when you can win, no matter how you win, it's pretty fun.”
From the looks of it, Larson will be doing that for many years to come.
NASCAR on TV this weekend
Iowa Speedway
Friday
4:30 p.m. — Xfinity practice (USA)
5:30 p.m. — Cup practice (USA)
8 p.m. — ARCA Atlas 150 (FS1)
Saturday
Noon — Xfinity qualifying (USA)
1 p.m. — Cup qualifying (USA)
3:30 p.m. — Xfinity Hy Vee Perks 250 (USA)
Sunday
7 p.m. — Cup Iowa Corn 350 (USA)
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NASCAR driver Kyle Larson among racing's greatest
