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Kyle Larson, A Changed Man, Is Nascar’s Champion With Rick Hendrick And Jeff Gordon By His Side

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Four-time Nascar Cup Series champion and Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon, now the vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, picked up the phone last fall.

Kyle Larson doesn’t remember what the date was exactly, but he can tell you he was racing a sprint car in Port Royal, PA, roughly 150 miles away from Philadelphia. Gordon told him team owner Rick Hendrick requested a meeting, teasing that he wasn’t sure what it was about.

“I think we should really go sit down and talk to him,” Gordon told Larson.

Larson’s mind wondered, unsure what in the world he would be doing after being suspended in April of 2020 by Nascar and Chip Ganassi Racing, which soon fired him, for saying a racial slur during an iRacing contest that was streamed on Twitch. He deactivated his social media accounts and focused on repenting for his mistake, meeting with Black leaders like Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee, ex-soccer player Tony Sanneh and more.

“I’m very thankful for this second chance and wanted to take advantage of it as best as I could,” Larson said earlier this week. “I lost a lot of hope about making it back, and I didn’t know what the meeting was going to be about. I had thoughts of what it would be about, and it was ultimately what I thought it was going to be.”

Larson couldn’t wait to get home. He loaded everything up onto his motor home, drove through the night and showered once he arrived home. Then, he went to Concord, N.C., meeting with two of the biggest names in motor sports on no sleep.

“My life changed on that day,” Larson said. “It was neat just to hear how he was a fan of mine, how he witnessed my driving style on the track and how I could bring a lot of positivity to his race team. He wanted to figure out a way to get me in his car. He’s such a powerful human being, and he was able to get it done. I’m very, very thankful for him.”

Not only would Larson take over the team’s No. 5 car — reviving Hendrick Motorsports’ first car number — but he also sported the blue and white paint scheme of the late Ricky Hendrick. Since few companies knew what to expect out of Larson and his mistake — as he called it — still fresh in everyone’s mind, Hendrick put his HendrickCars.com, which is an online new and used car sales retailer, on Larson’s Chevrolet.

“It means everything that you think it would probably be like,” Larson said when asked what it means to work for Hendrick Motorsports. “There’s no better race team out there. They are the best. They are the standard for every race team. I take a lot of pride in him trusting me to race for him. That trust means a lot.”

Now, Larson, 29, is a Nascar Cup Series champion, winning Sunday’s championship race at Phoenix Raceway to bring home the Bill France Trophy for Hendrick Motorsports.

Throughout the 2021 Cup Series season, Larson dominated. He won 10 points-paying races, including five of the 10 playoff events, on top of June’s All-Star Race. His 2,581 laps led are the most since NASCAR went to a 36-race schedule in 2001, and just shy of Gordon’s mark of 2,610 in 1995.  

Sunday’s victory put Larson in an elite class, becoming just the fourth driver to have at least 10 wins in a season since 1990 — the last being Jimmie Johnson in 2004, who made all of his 686 Cup starts with HMS. The championship victory is Hendrick Motorsports’ 14th in 38 years.

“It means probably more than it probably would have two years ago with the journey I put myself through to get back to this point,” Larson said. “I’m appreciative of the support I’ve had over the last two years or so. I’m glad I could repay everyone back with a NASCAR championship.”

To put Larson's outstanding season into perspective, his 20 top fives and 26 top 10s are the most for a Hendrick Motorsports driver since Jeff Gordon had 21 top fives and 30 top 10s in 2007. Johnson also had 20 top fives that season en route to his second of seven titles.

Larson, who’s known for being an introvert and seldom showed emotion in the past, broke down in tears as he circled around for his victory celebration. Now, he’s able to soak in the reality that he is indeed a champion, Nascar’s first-ever Asian American driver to accomplish such a feat.

As Larson celebrated the championship with Hendrick, Gordon, crew chief Cliff Daniels and the rest of Hendrick Motorsports, it was impossible to notice the innocent joy of his children, 6-year-old Owen and 3-year-old Audrey. Just like after each of Larson’s victories, his wife Katelyn Larson shotgunned a beer — in this case, multiple.

“Getting to have my kids there in Victory Lane was really special,” Larson said. “They haven’t been to many races this year with the way the pandemic changed the rules and it’s just a one-day flight to a race. The ones that they’ve been to, I haven’t won at.

“Seeing Owen and how happy he was, I could see he was proud of me, too, which made me feel good. I think he understood the race on Sunday was bigger than others.”

But the road to becoming a champion was not a simple one. There is no road map for Larson’s roller coaster journey.

The Two Years That Changed Kyle Larson

No one expected a Nascar star in the making to say a racial slur. But it happened.

Larson lost everything. His sponsors. His job. Even some fans. He hit rock bottom.

“Having the support of my family and friends was the most important thing that kept me going,” Larson said. “I also got to still race on dirt tracks, and it was good to compete and see fans. The people who are important to me still love me. That was the good thing.”

By October, Larson resurfaced. CBS This Morning aired a six-minute interview with Larson, where he not only admitted his wrongdoing, but detailed the work he was doing beyond Nascar’s parameters with its reinstatement program.

Eventually, he received the aforementioned call from Gordon that changed his life. With only a handful of sponsors willing to back Larson in some capacity, Hendrick stepped up to the plate.

Nations Guard, MetroTech, Valvoline, Tarlton & Son, Cincinnati and Freightliner sponsored the team for a combined 12 races. By July, as Larson’s championship season was taking form, Hendrick announced HendrickCars.com would be Larson’s primary sponsor for 35 races in 2022 and 2023. The move wasn’t because companies wouldn’t work with Larson, but due to the firm’s high ROI.

“My phone rang and I got to have a meeting with Rick Hendrick, and my life changed ever since,” Larson said. “To cap it off with a championship feels more special than it would have a couple of years ago.”

But Larson is the same driver as he always was on the track. Away from racing, though, he is a reformed man, one who is dedicated to helping others now.

In March, as Larson settled into his new role at Hendrick Motorsports, he announced the formation of the Kyle Larson Foundation. The goal of the nonprofit is to serve the nation's youth, families and communities in need with hands-on support, which was largely motivated by his meeting with Sanneh and the Urban Youth Racing School in Philadelphia.

Larson started his charity by announcing a Drive for 5 program, which raised more than $500,000 to support students with scholarships at the racing school. Additionally, he set out to provide meals for five families each day with The Sanneh Foundation and to support five needy communities with Hendrick Cares school grants.

Larson said he will donate $5 for every lap he completes in the Cup Series in 2021, which totaled exactly 9,000 circuits for a $45,000 donation. Plus, he said he'd donate $5,000 for every top five (20), which totals $100,000. Simple math, that’s $145,000 right there.

“I have a whole new perspective on my life, as well as other people’s lives,” Larson said. “I grew up through it all. I look back on the mistake and the experience — a lot of people think of it as a negative thing — I feel like it’s had a positive impact on my life personally and professionally.”

Kyle Larson’s Road To The Top

Larson’s first Cup Series victory at Michigan International Speedway in 2016 came in his 99th start, following four second-place finishes in nearly three seasons.

The next year became his standout performance until his dominance in 2021. To start the 2017 campaign, Larson’s No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing team finished runner-up in three straight races at Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix, finally winning at Auto Club Speedway in the fifth race of the year. He concluded that season with four triumphs and finished the year eighth in the standings.

“We definitely had moments where we were fast and moments when the wheels would fall off,” Larson said, reflecting on his years with Chip Ganassi Racing. “When I got to experience Hendrick Motorsports, I realize now that we didn’t have the resources these big teams have.

“Now that I’m at Hendrick, it makes me appreciate my years I had at Ganassi even more. We did way more and accomplished way more than we probably should have compared to what resources Hendrick has. In 2017, we won four races and we were a championship favorite. That’s something I’m really proud of and something I’m more proud of after spending a year at Hendrick.”

Even during a winless 2018 season, Larson earned 12 top fives and 19 top 10s. Larson returned to Victory Lane late in 2019 at Dover International Speedway en route to a then career-high finish of sixth in the standings.

Prior to Larson’s ascent to the Cup Series, he was well-known in Nascar for having a route similar to Gordon. Coming from dirt cars, it seemed like he could win in anything and everything.

He captured the 2012 ARCA Menards Series East championship with two victories for Rev Racing, which works hand-in-hand with Nascar's Drive for Diversity program in which Larson starred within.

Larson quickly signed with Chip Ganassi Racing (then known as Earnhardt Ganassi Racing) and steadily climbed through the rankings. In 2012, he made four Camping World Truck Series starts with a best finish of second in the penultimate race at Phoenix Raceway before moving to the Xfinity Series full time in 2013.

Though Larson didn’t win a race in his first Xfinity Series season, Ganassi promoted him to the Cup Series late in the season, eventually replacing ex-Formula 1 star Juan Pablo Montoya in the No. 42 Chevrolet.

Larson finished runner-up in the Xfinity Series five times with Turner Scott Motorsports before scoring his first victory in March 2014 at Auto Club Speedway. That season, besides winning the Sunoco SUN Rookie of the Year award in the Cup Series, he also ran 28 of 33 Xfinity Series races, with one more win and 21 top 10s, solidifying himself as a top prospect.

Looking into the future, Larson still has a few races to run in 2021. He’s going to total more than 100 starts in different racecars, and that’s just the way he wants it.

Larson said, “I love being known as the type of guy who will race a car any day of the week.”

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