CHARLESTON, S.C. – Kyle Larson has Saturday night’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway highlighted.
In the quick flight home from Charleston, South Carolina, following a school visit at Meeting Street Academy, the 26-year-old driver spoke about the 0.533-mile oval with hope.
Hope for a strong run as the playoffs loom, but more than that: Hope for his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win of 2018.
“Bristol is definitely my favorite track,” he told NASCAR.com. “I just enjoy the style of driving it takes to be fast there. It’s really aggressive and now that they’ve kind of ironed out the VHT where it’s on the bottom, the racing’s even better than it used to be. I just like it – I’m really good there, too.
“I’ve never won but I’ve been close every time we’ve raced there. Hopefully this will be the year.”
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A recent frontrunner at the Eastern Tennessee track, Larson has finished in the top 10 for the last three races at Bristol, pacing the field for 472 laps in that span. He was notably close in the spring trip to Bristol, coming up second to race-winner Kyle Busch after leading 200 laps. He declared this week that there’s some “unfinished business” there.
“I think Bristol is the place for sure that I look at for the rest of the season,” he said on nabbing his first Cup victory of 2018. “Here and Homestead are probably my two best tracks. This place takes more, I feel like driver is a bigger factor than car.
“For sure I think your Big 3 will still be up there, but I think you’ll see some other guys – including myself – that have been a little inconsistent this year run up front and challenge for the win and hopefully beat those guys.”
Larson saw a fellow Chevrolet driver – and Big 3 outsider – Chase Elliott break through for his first career win in the Monster Energy Series two weeks ago at Watkins Glen. While he thought his own CGR Chevrolet team started the season ahead of the other bowties, the manufacturer’s other teams have begun to make “more gains” than his No. 42 team has. Now, he considers his team “kind of equal with them.”
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What’s noteworthy to Larson isn’t the lack of victories, though – it’s the races run en route to those solid results that have put Larson in position to challenge for a championship.
“I think we’d like to have a win or two by now, but we’ve challenged for a few wins already this year, so it’s not like we aren’t capable of winning,” he said. “We’ve run up front a lot of the time. There’s some tracks where we’re definitely off, but I think that’s more on my part than the team’s part. We’ve just got to keep working hard and keep trying to get better as an organization and as a team, really. Try to go for that championship. There’s a lot of teams that are doing a really good job and we’re just a small step behind them.”
The playoffs begin in a little over four weeks at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, offering a chance for Larson & Co. to gear up for a title.
If they can put all the pieces together, Larson just might have a shot at what is coincidently his other best track — Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“I think we’ll get to have some bigger gains here shortly in the next couple months,” he said. “I’m excited about that and just hoping that we can have a good couple rounds of playoffs and maybe if things start falling into place at the right time, we can go for a championship.”