Kyle Larson just snagged his third NASCAR Cup Series championship Sunday night, and he wasted absolutely no time dishing out the ultimate revenge. Flanked by team owner Rick Hendrick, crew chief Cliff Daniels, and racing legend Jeff Gordon, Larson and his crew straight-up performatively munched on Snickers bars right after lifting that championship trophy. This wasn’t some random snack break, folks. This was a long-simmering shot fired directly at Denny Hamlin, who earlier in the season had declared Hendrick wasn’t racing up to snuff and needed a Snickers to get back in the game. Oh, the irony!
The Sweetest Revenge is Served on Championship Night
Hamlin’s jab about Hendrick needing a Snickers? Larson totally admits Hamlin was right. Larson himself had some decent early-season runs, like a second-place finish at Kansas and third-place finishes in Bristol and Phoenix. But he also had some absolute bombs, finishing 32nd or below in four of the year’s first 11 races. That’s not the kind of stat sheet you expect from a champ, right? Larson told Yahoo Sports that early on, he was thinking, “Gosh, we’re so bad right now.” He even admitted, “Man, this is gonna be a miserable year. How are we going to pull through?” To cap it off with a championship after all that? He called it “insane.” He finished the regular season seventh in the standings, but seriously, he hadn’t won a race in 51 attempts heading into the playoffs. There wasn’t a single sign he was about to flip the switch.
From Dirt Tracks to Dominance, The Confidence Just Exploded
Larson kept the faith though. He said he still felt capable of winning if things went right, and his continued wins in dirt track racing gave him the motivation he needed. He knew he could drive, they just needed to get the cars dialed in. And then, everything just clicked. Once the Chase started, they hit Darlington, grabbed a fifth-place finish, and he knew they were executing. The next week? Boom, a win at Gateway. “Really from that point forward, it was like, all right, we are definitely in this,” he said. And boy, were they ever “in” it. Larson absolutely tore through the playoffs, delivering an astounding run of 1-2-1-2 through Gateway, Bristol, Kansas, and Las Vegas. A late-season victory at Talladega, his first ever on a superspeedway, basically iced the championship. That left Sunday’s final race as a high-speed coronation. Larson put it best, “In sports, confidence can really carry you a long way. Our confidence built very rapidly and quickly. It was just crazy how it snowballed into good finishes each and every week.” What a way to silence the doubters and claim that third title!
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
Leave a Reply