KANSAS CITY, Kan. — No one has ever dominated Kansas Speedway the way Kyle Larson did Sunday afternoon.
The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet paced the field for 221 of 267 laps — a whopping 82.7% of the event. Those are the most laps any one driver has ever led in a race at Kansas, a track that began hosting Cup in 2001 — 24 years ago. He also scored the first “perfect” race of 2025 — a Stage 1 win, a Stage 2 win, the race win and a bonus point for posting the Xfinity Fastest Lap of Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 — to leave the Sunflower State blooming with 61 points earned, seven playoff points added to his tally and an extended NASCAR Cup Series points lead.
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The accomplishments keep coming from Larson, along with the adornment of “Greatest of All-Time” from fans and competitors alike who can’t help but admire what he’s doing behind the wheel. So it’s that much more fitting that this win comes during the month of May, just two weeks before Larson will attempt the Memorial Day Weekend Double of the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day for the second straight season.
There is a sense of deja vu that comes with this victory. Larson sparked his 2024 Double campaign with a Kansas win too on the front side of May, with the California native going on to qualify sixth for his inaugural Indy 500 attempt. But on Memorial Weekend Sunday, Mother Nature offered the biggest buzzkill imaginable, both delaying the Indy 500 and shortening the Coke 600 to prevent him from ever getting into the Cup car that day. Making matters worse, a late speeding penalty at Indy dropped Larson from a likely top-10 finish down to 18th at the checkered flag.
So, as practice for the Indy 500 begins Tuesday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, perhaps Sunday’s win at Kansas — his third of 2025 and second in four weeks — can be the start of a new, less frustrating journey toward accomplishing his long-targeted goal of completing 1,100 racing miles in one day in 2025. It is, at least, a step in the right direction.
“Obviously, confidence is something that’s important in everybody’s life, and right now he’s got a lot of it,” said Chad Knaus, a seven-time Cup champion as a former crew chief and currently Hendrick Motorsports’ vice president of competition.
Larson has driven and will drive any type of race car you could imagine: stock car, open-wheel car, sprint car, go-kart. If it’s got wheels, Larson’s racing it — and more often than not, he’s competing to win in it. Last week was no exception. On Friday night, Larson was piloting a dirt sprint car at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas and was involved in a frightening crash. By Saturday morning, he was back in his Cup car like it never happened, rocketing to the pole for Sunday’s race. And after Sunday’s domination, he was on a plane to Indianapolis prepping to get behind the wheel of a sprint car on Monday at Kokomo Speedway.
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What crew chief Cliff Daniels sees on Sundays is the combination of Larson’s otherworldly talent paired with constant seat time, propelling the entire No. 5 team forward. But it’s also catapulted by Larson’s innate ability not to dwell on the highs or lows of his various endeavors.
“For him, as many times as he races — and he’s talked about this before — he just doesn’t carry stuff over,” Daniels said. “He had a heck of a spill the other night in the High Limit (sprint car) race and walks right into the NASCAR race ready to go. He doesn’t carry one race to the next. Obviously, momentum can be a real thing and is always a good thing. But for him, he’s racing all the time, so I think he’s just ready to go.”
Indeed, Larson attributes his “short memory” to the frequency with which he races. With another event on the docket, there’s no time to get caught up in the minutia.
“I do think it’s because I race a lot, I’m guessing,” Larson said. “I would say that that’s a big part of me being able to move on quickly from things, whether it’s a good race or a bad race, a wreck or good result, bad result, mistakes on track. Obviously, though, if (a poor result) happens multiple times in a row, it can kind of linger a little bit longer, but more so just hurt your confidence a little bit. But, yeah, I don’t know. I think I just race a lot.”
For now, the streak he’s on has been nearly entirely positive. To score three Cup wins in 12 races marks the quickest ascent to the hat trick of Larson’s decade-long career. He leads the series standings by 35 points over Hendrick teammate William Byron and has previously won at each of the next four stops on the NASCAR calendar: North Wilkesboro Speedway (host of this weekend’s exhibition All-Star Race), Charlotte Motor Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway. To score his third Kansas triumph with opportunities for more success ahead should come as a warning shot to the rest of the Cup Series field.
“It’s certainly going to help carry our momentum,” Daniels said. “A lot of the things that we’re going to take away from today that I think will be important for us moving forward — if you look at the end of Stage 1 and Stage 2, we were not as fast as we wanted to be. And so I still think that there’s things on the table as a team that we need to go find and go build from and execute a little bit better with adjustments or car balance, whatever it may be. It’s going to be those type of things coupled with, of course, the win and momentum, which is always a good thing.
“But when you can run up front and still walk away and have areas to improve, that is what we enjoy. That’s what we’re going to take away.”
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