Joey Logano won the 2024 Cup Series championship. His third overall.
Kyle Larson didn’t even go to the season finale at Phoenix with a chance of winning his second.
But Larson seems to suggest he’s equally happy to have led NASCAR’s big-league series in victories — six, while no one else won more than four. The current playoff format rewards season-long success, but as the playoff shadows grow long, it also punishes any slip, even the slightest, and Larson slipped when he finished 11th and 13th in the first two races in the Round of 8 last fall.
“If anything, I just think the format in a way devalues a championship,” Larson said in a Hendrick Motorsports season preview for 2025.
“I think obviously you’d like to win the most races and win the championship and all that, but I think winning six races, that’s extremely tough to do, and we were a factor in many more than that.”
Kyle Larson has led NASCAR in victories twice
It was the second time in Larson’s NASCAR career that he led the Cup Series in victories. The other time, in 2021, half of his series-high 10 wins came during the playoffs — including three straight and a win in the championship race.
Failure to win another Cup Series championship hasn’t dampened his feelings for the second season in which he recorded the most visits to Victory Lane.
“I think we had a great year,” Larson said of 2024. “You led the series in a lot of categories, most all the categories, so yeah, it was a little disappointing to not get the chance to race for a championship at Phoenix, but at the same point, I understand the format.
“I really wasn’t that upset during the week of Phoenix because I knew no matter the result, we were going to end the season with the most wins. And to me, these days, that’s as important as winning a championship.”
Daytona 500 is up next; can Kyle Larson finally get it done?
NASCAR cars and drivers hit the track again the first weekend of February, when the Cook Out Clash introduces many modern fans to the historic Bowman Gray Stadium.
Two weeks later, the regular season begins as it always does, with the Daytona 500.
Ironically, one of NASCAR’s biggest modern stars has never won his sport’s biggest race. Larson is 0-for-11 at the Daytona 500 since his first full-time season in 2014. Throw in his career shutout in Daytona’s summertime race, he’s 0-for-21 at the World Center of Racing.
He’s not totally without victories at Daytona, however. In the short-lived Whelen All American Series visit to Daytona, he won a 2013 race on the short track set up off Turn 2 on the backstretch. Two years later, he was part of Chip Ganassi’s overall win in the Rolex 24.
Three years later, Larson won a 2018 Xfinity Series race at Daytona.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona 500 nears for NASCAR. Kyle Larson says wins bigger than Cup
