Kyle Larson used to look like the man who had Indianapolis figured out.
Now, the Racing Gods seem to have put his name on a very different list.
Not long ago, Larson was living every racer’s dream at the Brickyard. He won NASCAR’s biggest race at Indianapolis in 2024, kissed the bricks, and looked poised to turn the Speedway into another playground for his seemingly limitless talent. Around the same time, he embarked on his ambitious quest to complete “The Double” — racing both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day — cementing his reputation as the guy willing to race anything with four wheels.
Fast forward to Sunday, and Indianapolis has become a place Larson probably wouldn’t mind avoiding for a while.
Sunday’s Brickyard 400 was merely the latest reminder that motorsport has an incredible knack for kicking you in the teeth just when everything appears to be going your way.
Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet wasn’t just competitive — it was executing the race exactly as planned. Crew chief Cliff Daniels rolled the strategy dice at precisely the right time, bringing Larson to pit road on Lap 27. The move vaulted him from 10th into position to inherit the lead once the green-flag pit cycle played out.
It was the kind of race-winning strategy that wins crown-jewel events.
Then, on Lap 45, a left-rear tire failed entering Turn 3.
Instead of taking the lead, Larson was taking a ride backward into the outside wall.
“I had no warning,” Larson said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “Right when I lifted, I felt it drop and then spun.”
That’s becoming an all-too-familiar sentence.
Not just at Indianapolis.
Throughout 2026.
For a driver many still consider the most naturally gifted racer on the planet, Larson’s season has become an exercise in discovering increasingly painful ways to lose races he had every reason to contend for.
The collapse started at Chicagoland Speedway, where Larson spun while running inside the top five, lost two laps and never recovered. A week later at EchoPark Speedway, he found trouble twice — first sustaining damage in a late-race crash, then spinning again in a separate incident. Last weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway, contact with Connor Zilisch on pit road left his team scrambling to repair damage before Larson salvaged a 15th-place finish.
Now comes Indianapolis.
Three finishes outside the top 30 in the last four races.
A massive blow to a championship contender with only four regular-season races remaining.
The frustrating part?
None of it has been because Larson suddenly forgot how to drive.
Sunday proved exactly the opposite.
“We just had a tire let go,” Larson explained when asked whether the team had encouraged him to push harder. “I wouldn’t say pushing it had anything to do with it. I was only going three-tenths quicker than I had been with saving fuel. It was just a little bit of bad luck, I guess.
“I’m proud of this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team. We qualified 10th and did what we had to do to gain the track position to get to the lead. We executed all of that really well. There was still obviously a lot of the race left, but I feel like we were positioning ourselves within the race and within the strategy to set ourselves up well to go after a win.”
That’s what makes Larson’s recent relationship with Indianapolis so maddening.
It isn’t that he’s been slow.
It’s that Indianapolis keeps finding new ways to deny him.
His first attempt at the Indy-Charlotte Double in 2024 was sabotaged by the weather. Rain turned one of motorsport’s greatest challenges into a logistical nightmare, leaving Larson unable to complete all 1,100 miles. Surely, 2025 would be different. It wasn’t. He crashed out of the Indianapolis 500 before boarding a helicopter to Charlotte, where his Coca-Cola 600 ended in another wreck. Two years, two Double attempts, two spectacularly frustrating failures.
At Indianapolis, Larson keeps bringing championship-caliber talent. Indianapolis keeps handing him another story that begins with promise and ends with someone sweeping up carbon fiber.
Even in last year’s Brickyard 400, Larson had one of the fastest cars before finishing second after Bubba Wallace prevailed in overtime.
Now, just when everything was lining up for another shot at kissing the bricks, a tire had other ideas.
If this sounds like bad luck, that’s because it is.
Every championship season includes a stretch where the racing gods decide whether they’re going to smile on you or make your life miserable.
Right now, they’re treating Kyle Larson like someone who forgot to return a borrowed lawn mower.
The good news is that Hendrick Motorsports still has the speed. Daniels is still calling races like one of the best crew chiefs in the garage. Larson is still capable of winning any weekend he unloads from the hauler.
The bad news?
Momentum is a funny thing in NASCAR. It can disappear far faster than it arrives.
Four races ago, Larson looked like a legitimate threat to challenge for the regular-season championship.
Now, he’s simply looking for a weekend where Indianapolis—or fate, or tires, or whatever unseen force has attached itself to the No. 5 Chevrolet—finally decides to leave him alone.
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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