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Daniels didn’t win with Jimmie Johnson in 50 races with the seven-time Cup champion leading into his retirement. Then he met and started working with crew chief Cliff Daniels, considered one of the smartest engineers on the Hendrick campus.īut a smart engineer doesn’t always correlate to crew chief success.

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The confidence came from Larson having watched how strong Hendrick drivers had raced in the past, including Chase Elliott winning the 2020 Cup title. Larson has found victory lane often in 2021, winning six races – which matches the previous total for his career. 'I think we were confident, but I guess being confident in our confidence was good to have that win at Vegas.' 'It was just good to put a great race together that day and really kind of get us all just confident,' Larson said. And would there be any rust not having raced a stock car since March of 2020. 'I’m just excited that I have had people who believed in me from the beginning and through the hard times, and people who have stepped up that did believe in me and allowed me to have this opportunity to chase a dream and chase a championship.'Ĭonsidered a top talent, the question at the start of the year was how long would it take for Larson to win in Hendrick Motorsports equipment. 'I don’t want to think about too much,' Larson said. It very well could, but Larson isn’t into looking back.

It was in that race, that made people believe that this could be Larson’s comeback season. NASCAR returns to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the site of Larson’s first win for Hendrick Motorsports in just the fourth race of 2021. Larson heads this weekend to the place that set the tone for him this year. As Larson started rattling off wins and Larson’s grassroots fan base started buying passenger vehicles in support of their driver, Hendrick’s automotive division announced in July it increased its sponsorship commitment to Larson, allowing Hendrick to sign Larson through 2023. So, he sponsored Larson himself through his automotive dealership’s online sales website for select races. He also knows a business opportunity when he sees it.

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Hendrick, the most successful owner in NASCAR Cup Series history, knows talent when he sees it. The first person who stepped up was Rick Hendrick, who certainly had hoped he could land Larson even if Stewart-Haas Racing seemed a better initial fit, with Stewart’s sprint-car racing background similar to Larson’s. Larson says he wasn't sure he'd back in NASCAR, and certainly didn't expect to be contending, as soon as 2021. 'So it is a little bit surreal, but I don’t know. 'Fifteen months ago, I would have thought I would be racing for a World of Outlaws championship at this point, not a NASCAR Cup Series championship,' Larson said. And Larson wasn’t sure if anyone else would. Meanwhile, Tony Stewart, the car owner and racing legend, couldn’t hire him for his NASCAR team because Ford Motor Company didn’t want to take the risk. He started driving dirt late models and immediately was a threat to win.

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A star in midgets and an accomplished driver in sprint cars, he continued to race, dominating in various sprint-car events, enjoying his best results ever in the World of Outlaws, considered the top sprint-car series in the nation. When racing resumed once feasible during the pandemic in 2020, Larson had no NASCAR ride. 'I just want to show people that I am a great race-car driver, but I’m also a great person and I’m not who some people think I was from that one night.'

'I don’t really have an opinion of people using it, but I don’t view what I’m doing now as redemption at all,' Larson told FOX Sports in an interview last week.

The thing is, Larson doesn’t use that word. Are the wins a sign of redemption? Does his continuous work with various groups focused on diversity signify redemption? Chip Ganassi Racing had no choice but to fire him.Īs he has won races and signed new sponsors, the comeback storyline of Larson, to many observers, focuses on redemption.

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But life didn’t last year.Īfter casually using a racial slur in acknowledging a friend on what he thought was a private channel during an online racing event in April 2020, Larson saw his professional life collapse in days. Racing, while a lot of work, comes easy to him. Always moving forward, calculating the next move, the next turn. He would just go from race to race being Kyle Larson, a guy who gets paid to drive a race car really, really fast. He never really has even before his self-inflicted drama of 2020. Larson, frankly, doesn’t like to look back. After a highly controversial 2020 season, Kyle Larson is now the favorite to win his first NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2021.