April 3, 2019 | By Lee Spencer

Larson looks to lift his performance at Bristol

Don’t be surprised if Kyle Larson has a little more pep in his step this week.

Bristol Motor Speedway—his favorite track—is next on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup schedule. Over the last five races at Thunder Valley, Larson has scored more points than any other driver on the tour at the half-mile track.

And given Larson’s lackluster results this season, Bristol could not have come at a better time.

“Bristol to me feels like a 500-lap dirt race,” Larson said. “It’s just really intense and aggressive. Again, you can run the top and the bottom and pull slide jobs and all that. It suits my driving style a lot. It’s got progressive banking so I think that’s why; everybody can run the top there. It’s not too hard to run the top at Bristol.”

Over the last four Bristol races, Larson’s results have been remarkable. His average qualifying effort is 2.5 bolstered by a pair of poles. His average finish is 4.75. Although he has yet to win at the Last Great Coliseum, Larson was runner-up to Kyle and Kurt Busch in Cup competition last year. 

“I don’t feel like I’m owed anything anywhere, but that’s the one track where I feel like time after time I’m close to winning a race there every time I go,” said Larson, who finished .367-seconds behind his current teammate Kurt Busch in the Bristol night race. “I just don’t get it done. Not that it owes me anything. I just need to do a better job at the end of the races.”

Larson’s stats corroborate that statement. In 190 career Cup starts, Larson has five wins and 20 second-place finishes. 

One reason team owner Chip Ganassi turned to Kurt Busch as a teammate for Larson was to mentor the 26-year-old racer as he enters his sixth-full year in Cup. Larson has tremendous potential, but there are gaps in his stock car development, primarily understanding the mechanics of the car.

“I think I’m too old to learn about that stuff,” Larson said before the season started. “Honestly, I don’t care about learning about the car. I say it all the time.  I get paid to race. They get paid to work on it.”

Busch grew up working on his own cars, which made it easier for him to adapt when NASCAR changes the rules or if he moves to a different manufacturer. Although Larson still maintains a solid relationship with former teammate Jamie McMurray, he appreciates Busch’s contribution. He feels the 2004 champion could have been a greater asset to him earlier in his stock car career. 

“Kurt has been good,” Larson said. “I wish I could have been his teammate back when driving styles meant something. It’s just tough to learn as much as I could have learned off of him.  

“But still, listening to him, you dissect a race car and what he’s feeling each and every weekend. It doesn’t matter what track you go to. He can describe a car and what he’s feeling down to every inch of the race track. So, it’s pretty amazing and I don’t have that feel. I think just for me, not growing up racing these cars; but just listening to him and trying to learn off of that kind of stuff has been fun to listen to.”

Both drivers have struggled with the 2019 qualifying procedures. Larson has advanced to the final round of qualifying in three of the first seven races, Busch just once. But while Busch has recovered during the race with two top fives and five top 10s, Larson has struggled.

The No. 42 Ganassi Racing team has just two top-10 finishes—Daytona 500 and Phoenix Raceway—in the last seven races. Although Larson led 142 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway and secured a stage win, a speeding penalty took him out of contention. He finished 12th. After 147 laps at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday, Larson had a tire fail and plowed into the wall. He finished 39th.

No, Bristol could not have come at a better time for Larson to jumpstart the 2019 season. The more he races on the half-mile bullring, the better he gets.

“I’ve always raced well there,” Larson said. “I think I lead laps almost every time I’m there and always, at some point in the race, I feel like I’m challenging for the win.

“Before, our balance wasn’t as good in qualifying. And then I would try to over-compensate and drive too hard and that makes everything just worse. The last couple of years in working with the same group of guys, we’ve kind of gotten a good package when we go there. So, that always helps for qualifying; and just becoming older and knowing what you need to do more.”