Kyle Larson stormed out of the gates with three wins in a seven-race stretch starting at Homestead, lighting up the middle phase of the regular season. But ever since his ill-fated second crack at ‘The Double,’ crashing out of both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600, his form has taken a sharp downturn.
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In the eight races that followed, Larson has cracked the top-five only once and posted just two other top-10 finishes. According to Dale Earnhardt Jr., that grueling attempt at history may have knocked the wind out of his sails.
On the latest episode of The Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt didn’t beat around the bush, saying, “I think that he probably wouldn’t admit this, and he’d probably say I’m wrong. But I think that he went and tried to run Indy, and he said, ‘I got no interest in chasing ‘The Double’ again.’
“I feel like he might think that all the s**t that it requires to do all that sort of has taken his focus away from his Sunday s**t, and he’s like, ‘You know what, it’s not worth it.'”
“Well, it feels like to me that it sort of derailed their momentum, and it derailed it at a time where the schedule is challenging. Like y’all, you don’t need any hiccups, right? And it’s created a bit of a stretch where they just haven’t looked like themselves,” Earnhardt continued.
The slump hit rock bottom at Sonoma Raceway, where Larson limped home in 35th. It was his fourth finish outside the top 10 since his failed bid to conquer both the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 races in one day.
Dale Jr.’s take echoed Kyle Petty’s, who had earlier pegged Larson’s rough patch to the very same double-duty grind. On NASCAR’s Inside the Race with Alex Weaver and Todd Gordon, Petty dissected the fallout and didn’t hesitate to lay the blame on that double-duty gamble.
Still, Petty viewed the situation through a broader lens. He dubbed it the “Jimmie Johnson syndrome,” referring to the era when Johnson consistently finished in the top five, yet fans griped he wasn’t winning. In Petty’s eyes, Larson’s recent skid isn’t a cause for alarm, but rather a result of the high bar he’s set for himself.
“It’ll come back around… We all know it,” Petty concluded. “Racing is a cyclical sport, man. You are king of the hill for three races, and then that streak goes cold.”
