Homestead-Miami Speedway (Homestead, Fla.) – Kyle Larson, mired in a winless streak that would eventually reach 51 races, sat in a Hendrick Motorsports meeting listening to other drivers and crew chiefs and team management discuss how they could break out of their funk.
When it was Larson’s turn to speak, a driver previously known for being relatively quiet delivered a powerful message.
“Listen, nobody can beat us if we work together,” Larson said, according to his team owner Rick Hendrick.
Hendrick pointed to that moment as a sign that Larson could lead Hendrick back to the front.
Kyle Larson was confident his team could turn things around for The Chase. (Getty Images)
The team was coming off a race where all four of Hendrick’s drivers struggled to finish in the top 20. The weight of trying to figure out Chevrolet’s new body design had bogged down the organization in one of its weakest periods in recent years.
Among the three drivers, only Chase Elliott had won.
“I remember being very sad in the room … and it was just sadness and everyone was talking about how their confidence is down and the decision-making is not where it needs to be because we just got beat on the race track,” Larson explained in his championship press conference.
“It was getting close to my turn and I said, ‘I still believe.’ We’re Hendrick Motorsports, whether it’s now, next year or whatever, I know eventually we’re going to get where we want to be, we just have to believe in ourselves.”
Larson was right.
The 34-year-old Larson won his third NASCAR Cup Series title Sunday night, eight weeks removed from snapping that 51-game winless streak. He won three races – the 33rd, 34th and 35th Cup wins of his career – on his way to his third Cup title.
Kyle Larson celebrated with his family after winning the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Championship. (Getty Images)
The Hendrick Motorsports driver explained that the comment was rooted in him having competed at Chip Ganassi Racing for six plus years with six wins. Since joining Hendrick in 2021, he has now won 29 races and three titles (2021, 2025, 2026).
Larson didn’t think he would come out of that meet hoisting the championship trophy. But he had faith that they would get their mojo back – not from being there, done that, but more from having seen it and been beaten by it.
“Living on the other side of the fence and competing against them, they’ve been down before, they know the recipe to get out of it,” Larson said. “That’s just what I wanted to remind everybody. It might not be now, but we have to have faith that we can get out of this.”
The seventh seed entering the Chase, Larson performed so well that he needed to finish 28th in the race on Sunday to win the title. While other drivers and teams tripped up and fell over themselves during the 10-week Chase, Larson only had one bad race, which was a 34th in Phoenix.
In addition to the three wins and the upset at Phoenix, Larson posted two seconds, a fifth, a sixth and a ninth before finishing 12th at Homestead. to capture the 10-race Chase.
Crew chief Cliff Daniels has been a big part of Larson’s success in the Cup. (Getty Images)
They worked together – with crew chief Cliff Daniels as the glue – and won the title with one of the best talents in the sport, one who is being compared most to seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.
Larson Chase’s 10-race streak included one epic win at Talladega where he led when he took the white flag, fell back to 11th and then rallied to win the race all in one lap.
“He’s just an incredible talent, the Jimmie of this generation, isn’t he?” Regular season champion Denny Hamlin told me and other reporters after the race. “That’s the only way you can describe it. When it comes to playoff time, they perform at their best and that’s something Jimmie did.
“Jimmie was a guy who could get tons of speed out of the car. Kyle is the same way. You could argue even more speed. There’s a little bit more variance in results because of how hard he pushes it. But he reaps the benefits because he gets a lot of wins.”
For Larson, he saw his fifth-place finish at Darlington as the key.
“I really had no confidence, zero, before The Chase,” Larson said Thursday. “I hope, but not believe, but I really would see Darlington as a turning point of my faith. I know we didn’t win, but I feel like we had a really good day. We maximized what we had for us that weekend and that day.
“And I remember leaving that race thinking, man, this is the first time I’ve felt like the (No.) 5 team in forever. We were calling a race to win. I didn’t feel like we’d been in that position in a long time.”
There was no stopping Larson after that. He won the following week at World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) as the team rallied and found speed. Just like Larson said.
“This wasn’t Kyle Larson two years ago,” Hendrick said during the post-race press conference. “He wouldn’t have had that input for all the crew chiefs and drivers…Kyle actually took a leadership role.”
Daniels remembered that well.
His recollection during the post-race press conference was that Larson said something like, “Hey, just so everyone knows, we’re not faster right now, but we’re still Hendrick Motorsports, so I have every confidence that we can come back and win this thing.”
Just as Larson often makes the right move at the right time, he chose the right words for the right time.
“That kind of connected with me and resonated with a lot of people who I think heard that message from him at the time of knowing. We’re not okay, things aren’t going well, but also the belief that we can come together as people, as a team,” Daniels said.
And the answer is something that made Larson proud.
“I could feel we were good, but I definitely didn’t think we were going to run away these last 10 weeks,” Larson said as he accepted the championship trophy.
“To get three wins, be as consistent as we were, it’s just a real testament to Cliff’s leadership. … I knew that whenever they got together, we were going to be ready. I just didn’t know it was going to be this year and at the time that it was.”
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