For most of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship race, Kyle Larson looked more like a background character than a man chasing a second title. One of the Championship 4? Technically, yes. But for much of the afternoon, his No. 5 Chevrolet didn’t seem interested in joining the conversation.
Sure, Larson’s had three wins this season, but the last one came back in May at Kansas—a different lifetime ago in racing terms. Since then, his results have bounced between “respectable” and “please let’s not talk about it.” Still, he did what great drivers do: he kept showing up. He clawed, scraped, and strategized his way into the final four. But at Phoenix, even that seemed like it might not be enough.
No spark. No flash. No sign of that signature Larson magic.
And then, somehow, he won it all.
He didn’t win the race—Ryan Blaney did—but Larson crossed the line ahead of the other three championship contenders, making him a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion. A champion, perhaps, almost by accident.
“I guess,” Larson said with a laugh when asked if the lucky bracelet his son Owen made him had anything to do with it. “We did the best job we could…Honestly, I can’t believe it. Like, we didn’t lead a lap today. Somehow won the championship.”
You could almost see him shaking his head behind that smirk.
The story of his race sounded less like a masterclass and more like a survival course. “We had an average car at best,” Larson admitted. “We had the right front go down, lost a lap. Got saved by the caution. Did the wave-around. Was really bad that run. We took two tires. I was like, ‘Oh God, here we go. We’re going to go to the back now.’”
Instead, fate—or perhaps just good timing—intervened. That two-tire gamble, which usually spells disaster in a championship race, suddenly turned golden. “It had a lot more grip than I anticipated,” he said. “We got lucky with the final caution. I was really hoping we were going to take two again. I felt like I learned a lot on that restart, bombing one and two really hard. Thought I could do the same thing if we got another one.”
It’s not often you hear a driver say “I can’t believe it” twice in the same interview—but Larson did. Because even he knew this one didn’t make logical sense.
There was no dominant car, no epic drive from the back, no Hollywood ending. Just a driver who refused to give up, a crew chief who never stopped planning, and a team that kept its nerve when everyone else was losing theirs.
“What a year by this Hendrick Motorsports,” Larson said. “Cliff Daniels—his leadership, his complete leadership—just showed that whole race. Keeping us all motivated. Always having a plan. All of that. That’s just the story of our season.”
And maybe that’s why this championship feels different. It wasn’t a victory built on fireworks or speed—it was built on calm. It was the kind of win that comes when everything goes wrong but the team still finds a way to make it right.
“Again, just unbelievable,” Larson said, almost whispering by the end. “I cannot believe it. This is insane.”
It was.
Because somehow, without leading a single lap, Kyle Larson became a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion—proof that sometimes, in this sport, persistence really does beat perfection.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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