Kyle Larson was comfortable enough to openly admit that Hendrick Motorsports is now facing one of its worst stretches in racing history.

These statements by the legendary driver come against the background of a disastrous Watkins Glen outing, something made even more shocking considering Larson’s own elite record on such circuits.

The two-time champion alongside Hendrick has won multiple races at the Glen and Sonoma, yet despite holding this pedigree, there was a complete collapse that HMS faced, where all four of their cars finished outside the top 20 for the first time on a road course since 2005.

While doing his part to promote the race next month at Sonoma, Larson reflected on his Californian roots before addressing the problems HMS was facing.

“California is such a big state, but specifically Northern California, there’s just a lot of racing that you can do,” Larson explained. “I was lucky, you know, growing up racing sprint cars, you know, at tracks that were really difficult to handle, really sticky, rough racetracks out here that you have to run really hard at.”

Larson then bluntly admitted that the road ahead was hard. “We have a lot of work to do,” Larson said before adding, “Watkins Glen, we’ve just gotten worse and worse, and this package, we were really bad this past weekend. In Talladega, we got caught up in a crash, were miserable at Texas, and almost as miserable at Watkins Glen.”

The champ, however, continued to be optimistic. “Any of the weekends that we’ve struggled at, I think we’ve learned from it,” he said. “I’m excited to get to San Diego and then Sonoma… to see if we can implement the things that we feel like we’ve learned.”

But most importantly, he placed his faith in HMS as he added, “The good thing about Hendrick Motorsports is they always figure it out. Whether it takes a week, a year, or two years, they are going to be dominant once they do.”

The question, however, arises that despite the dismal performance at the Glen, why does Larson seem so optimistic? Is there something else backing his confidence up?

The speed never left Kyle Larson — only the results did

What makes this slump in Kyle Larson’s record even more unusual is that the speed for the champ still exists. Despite the drought in the Cup Series, Larson has led qualifying, he has led laps, and is still very dominant on the track.

Take, for example, Phoenix, where Larson started second, while he also grabbed strong qualifying runs at Las Vegas and Talladega.

Even beyond the Cup Series, he has been very dominant. Larson dominated the Xfinity race at Texas, where he led for a massive 93 laps before winning the race for JR Motorsports. Go back weeks to Bristol, where he led for 230 laps before strategy outed him, making him finish second.

So clearly the problem isn’t Larson. The problem instead seems to be internal with reference to HMS. The issue appears tied to the team being unable to adapt to this new Chevrolet body, and HMS missing setups entirely at certain tracks. Larson himself admitted that the team may be “searching too much, and get off track a little bit.”

The underlying pace seems to be the exact reason that the No. 5 team driver seems to be so calm. All he has to do now is execute this speed well at Sonoma, and if he does, like we know, he simply will be unstoppable.

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason