Driver seeks first career win, third top-10 of June near his hometown
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SAN FRANCISCO — Kyle Larson has turned the proximity of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule’s rare time off with this weekend’s trip to Sonoma Raceway into his own version of NASCAR Goes West.
Singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on Wednesday night at the San Francisco Giants’ home field followed by go-kart racing, plus visits with friends and family from his close-by hometown of Elk Grove, California — only an 80-mile drive from Sonoma — Larson said he heard some boos from the Golden Gate City crowd, something he attributed to opting to use the more generic “home team” in the lyrics instead of substituting “Giants.”
Kyle, Katelyn and Owen have had a great week back home in California! Here they are at the San Francisco Giants game…
Posted by Kyle Larson Racing on Thursday, June 25, 2015
Larson figures to have a much more favorable rooting section in Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 (3 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, PRN, SiriusXM) at Sonoma, where his parents, sister, aunts and cousins plan to join his girlfriend, Katelyn Sweet, and the couple’s 6-month-old son, Owen. If he’s able to cash in on his improving road-course racing progress, Larson expects a homecoming capstone worth celebrating.
“It’d be a long night, a very long night,” Larson said Thursday from the track’s annual media luncheon in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. “Probably see the sun come up if I did win.”
Larson heads into the first road-course event of the NASCAR calendar with some modest momentum, following a season-best third place at Dover with an eighth at Pocono before nearly converting a late-race pit gamble from his crew chief, Chris Heroy, into a win at Michigan. Still, the three-race stretch has been a small upturn in a season of partially stunted growth.
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The 22-year-old driver notched eight top-five finishes in his Sunoco Rookie of the Year campaign last year. This season, it took Larson until Race No. 13 to scratch that column. He also ranks just 18th in the points standings, in part because Larson missed the series’ race at Martinsville Speedway in March, sitting out as a precautionary measure after suffering a fainting spell during an autograph session on the eve of the event.
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Pressed for reasons for the slide, Larson couldn’t narrow down the cause to just one factor.
“It’s just a little bit of everything,” Larson said. “A lot of it’s been my fault and some of it’s been bad luck and other things like that, so I don’t know. Maybe there is such a thing as a sophomore slump. I don’t know how that works, but it seems like it’s been happening this year a little bit. …
“It definitely can get you down every once in a while. You’ve just got to stay positive and look at the positive things of having that speed, just not finishing where you should. The race team’s been working really hard and our cars have been getting faster and faster each week.”
For a driver who climbed the racing ladder on dirt tracks, Larson’s finding favor with road courses wouldn’t seem to be a logical association. But the Chip Ganassi Racing racer said his confidence has risen thanks to both the feel of the car sliding through the right and left turns, and his most recent results on the twisty layouts.
Larson prevailed in a NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Sonoma last season, a prelude to his Sprint Cup debut at the 1.99-mile track, where he faded from the top 10 to a 28th-place finish after his car’s power steering failed just before the halfway point. Larson followed that effort with a fourth-place outing at Watkins Glen International, the Sprint Cup tour’s only other road course, in August. This February, he teamed with NASCAR teammate Jamie McMurray and Ganassi’s stable of IndyCar drivers to prevail in the Rolex 24, the crown jewel endurance race in IMSA’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship at Daytona International Speedway.
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Transferring that budding portfolio into a road-course breakthrough Sunday would do wonders for team morale, helping lift up an already tight-knit group. Though the trip through this season’s lower points hasn’t been a pleasurable one, it hasn’t stopped the No. 42 crew from savoring the ride.
“It’s still fun for sure,” Larson said. “We had a lot of exciting moments last year that probably made it even extra fun. We haven’t had many of those this year. I don’t know, I think once we start running better, we’ll all be having more fun as a team. I think we’ve been down a little bit, but we were all pumped up after Dover running third, and even at Michigan, making that big call and almost winning. We were all excited about that.
“When you have those moments, it makes racing extra fun, but we all wouldn’t be doing it if we weren’t having fun. We’re enjoying it for sure.”