FONTANA, Calif. – Kyle Larson, the can’t miss kid of Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates was expected to see his Sprint Cup Series career flourish with NASCAR’s most recent rules package change.
Looser, harder to driver cars with less downforce, it was surmised, would be right in the youngster’s wheelhouse. And it may be yet.
But four races into the 2016 season and Larson, 23, is 17th in points with just one top-15 finish in three races utilizing the new platform.
“Whether you have zero downforce or thousands of (pounds of) downforce, you still have to have a good car, good handling, good speed and all of that,” Larson said Friday at Auto Club Speedway, site of Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.)
“Right now we’ve just kind of struggled with getting the speed really. I feel like our balance has been close for the few races we’ve run (with this package). Just lack speed, especially on the long runs. That’s where I feel like we struggled last year and so far this season … as well.”
The former USAC open-wheel standout raced his way to eight top-five and 17 top-10 finishes in his first full season of Sprint Cup competition with CGR in 2014, including a runnerup finish to Kyle Busch here at Auto Club Speedway. That was good enough for 17th in the final points standings and saw him knocking on the door of a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup battle.
But the numbers fell off dramatically last season (two top fives and 10 top 10s) and resulted in a 19th-place finish.
A crew chief change for the No. 42 team — Chad Johnston replaced Chris Heroy — came during the offseason. Larson, still seeking his first Sprint Cup victory, opened the year with a seventh-place run at Daytona International Speedway. But he could muster only a 26th-best result at Atlanta and followed that with a 34th-place run a week later at Las Vegas.
He finished 12th last week at Phoenix.
“Hopefully we can take what we have learned here on the West Coast, get back to the shop and try and make our cars better,” he said. “We’ve gotten a little better the last couple of weeks; we still have a long way to go. Trying to stay positive and stay confident and hopefully our guys can figure it out.”
Teammate Jamie McMurray has fared somewhat better yet sits 15th in points and has yet to post a top-15 finish.
No Ganassi driver has won a points race since 2013.
Both teams, Larson acknowledged, “are struggling.”
“If one car was a lot better than the other, then we could place blame on the driver more,” he said. “We just haven’t hit on the right thing, I guess, to make speed.
“There are a lot of other teams that we ran around last year that are better than we are I feel like this year. That has been a little disappointing, but having that stuff happen early in the year, it just makes everybody work really hard.”
Thirteenth in the day’s only practice at ACS and starting 32nd after failing to advance out of the first round of qualifying Friday, Larson says he remains confident in his team and the entire organization.
“They’ve got the brains,” he said. “I just hold the wheel. They will get it better and we will start running up front more often.”