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Kyle Larson was the “Can’t Miss Kid” in 2014 when team owner Chip
Ganassi made a pre-emptive strike and brought him up to what is now
the NASCAR Cup Series.
After an Elite Eight nish in 2019 and a sixth-place nish in points,
Larson’s success is still in its relative infancy — with greatness peaking
over the horizon.
The “Can’t Miss Kid” nickname came after others with an equally
discerning eye for talent pegged him as “the real deal” and the sport’s
next star. In 2011, he won all three divisions of USAC Racing Silver
Crown, Sprint Cars and Midgets in a single night at Tony Stewart’s
Eldora Speedway and the 2015 Rolex 24 at Daytona sports car race.
While he’s shown bursts of speed in a full-bodied stock car, he’s still a
work in progress.
In 2019, Larson started with a seventh-place nish at Daytona, and
Atlanta, Larson dominated for 100 laps before speeding in pit road.
Ultimately, Larson would avenge a 75-race winless streak at Dover after
starting second and hanging tough all day.
After winning for the rst time in 2016 at Michigan and following that up
in 2017 with four trips to Victory Lane, Larson failed to win in 2018 in the
NASCAR Cup Series.
“This 2017 year was the rst where we actually had a solid season,”
Larson, a veteran of the sprint car wars who still nds time to compete
on dirt in a variety of open-wheel machinery some of which he owns
said. “We had some off-races but 2017 was the rst year where I felt
competitive every weekend and knew going to the track we would have a
shot to run top-ve, if not get a win.
“That’s a position I’ve always wanted to be in, in Cup and it was nice that
this year we got the opportunity to showcase how good our team is.”
Then came 2018. Although he qualied for the NASCAR Playoffs, he was
eliminated after the second round with 12 top-ves and 19 top-10s, but
he also had seven nishes of 23rd or worse to wind up ninth in the nal
standings. In 2019, Larson ran well — nishing fourth in Phoenix — but
was eliminated in the round of eight.
Between dirt racing and running a stock car, Larson continues to be
one of the most versatile drivers on either circuit. He nished 2019 with
a pole, eight top-ves, 17 top-10s and led 529 laps while doing it. Yet
Larson’s season was lled with valleys as well with a career-high eight
DNFs. In peak came when he nished in the top ten in ve consecutive
races just before the start of the Playoffs.
Chances are his comments after the 2018 season would be echoed again
in 2019; he remains a driver trying to get over the hump to greatness.
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“I mean, obviously I would have liked to have made it into the next
round,” he said after elimination in 2018. “But I’m glad it wasn’t anything
other than just us not performing where we needed to be that kept us
out of the next round. Just trying to gure out how to make our cars
better, trying to gure out this new package we’re running next year, try
to be prepared, good all season long.”
“I think the style of racing has changed some from, say, a decade ago,”
Larson said. “There’s a lot of younger, it seems like, really aggressive
drivers out there. Just with Busch being able to see me and my
aggression even more so up-close and being on the same team
and looking at the driver data, yeah, maybe there’s some things he
can learn.”
Chad Johnston, crew chief since taking over in 2016, returns and
the Ganassi organization made a solid hire with the addition of Doug
Duchardt as COO ahead of the 2018 season. Duchardt, a former
GM ofcial, spent 12 years at Hendrick Motorsports overseeing that
organization’s racing operations as executive vice president and
general manager.
“I’d like to think and hope that we could start out as good as what we
were in 2017, if not better, with the new car and another year as a
team together,” Larson said. “But you never know.”
2019 FEATURED DRIVERS
KYLE LARSON
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