Kyle Larson spent most of last summer mired in a slump, yet he never let the skid swallow him whole. Even as Hendrick Motorsports wrestled with uncharacteristic inconsistency, he kept his chin up, steadied the wheel, and drove his way to a second Cup championship by season’s end. His confidence did take a hit after his second double-duty attempt unraveled far from his expectations, but rather than spiral, he doubled down on trust, both in himself and in his team.
Advertisement
Speaking with Brad Gillie of The RACER, Larson peeled back the curtain on how he held his nerve through months of uneven results. “Even through all the bad weeks that we were having and lack of speed, I was confident because racing for Hendrick Motorsports was like, ‘Okay, I mean this isn’t going to last long, like we’re gonna next week we’re going to get them.'”
That optimism didn’t immediately translate into results, and Larson admitted the drought grew “worrisome and frustrating” as weeks stacked up. Still, no one inside the No. 5 camp let the frustration seep into the fabric of the team. Larson believes that collective resolve and the refusal to broadcast the struggle played a critical role in stopping the whole operation from buckling under pressure.
“I think we’re probably even more motivated than ever through those struggles,” Larson said.
Larson pointed directly to crew chief Cliff Daniels, calling his guidance the compass that kept everyone aligned. Daniels, he noted, “kept us on the right path and kept us zoned in on what we needed to do and keep working.”
In Larson’s view, the only way out of a slump was through it, by trusting the process, leaning on what built past success, and refusing to abandon the foundation.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver also recognized that momentum doesn’t return on demand. No one can predict how long it takes for performance to swing back in their favor, but he held tightly to his belief in himself, his team, and the system they’ve built. He praised the entire No. 5 group for refusing to ease up when the results didn’t match the effort.
While their weekly finishes didn’t always reflect it, Larson stated the team sharpened their execution behind the scenes, treated each race as a diagnostic tool, and inched closer to solving the performance riddle. Piece by piece, they improved their cars and zeroed in on what wasn’t working.
Besides that, Larson himself admitted that he has a short memory, and he likes it that way. That’s because psychological strength is a must-have for professional drivers at this level of racing. That includes moving on from failures quickly to focus on the next job at hand. That might also have been the factor in his overall growth throughout the season.
