1,000 Greatest Drivers: Kyle Larson

Someone else winning the title this year is a grand larsony.

Far too many people are looking down on Kyle Larson’s season more than they should be. A lot of people who understandably hate the NASCAR playoffs now act like the so-called “classic” Latford points system from 1975-2003 is the only way to evaluate which driver is the best performer. While it was marginally better than the knockout playoffs I guess, I have always felt that NASCAR has never had a good points system in its entire existence, so I have come to ignore championship results more and more when evaluating drivers’ seasons under this format. Larson is leading every single statistic I track on my main statistical table except for lead change record (he is slightly behind William Byron in lead change percentage, but ahead of him in lead change differential) and poles (because of the bizarre Michael McDowell drafting track juggernaut). Entering this weekend’s race at Phoenix, he has already clinched the lead in lead shares, cumulative races led, and speed percentile. This year marks the third time in the last four seasons that Larson leads in speed percentile. He is also currently leading Christopher Bell in my stock car model despite his lack of consistency, although he has not yet clinched that (if Bell beats all his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates at Phoenix and Larson finishes behind all his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Bell will overtake Larson). While the Latfordites will act like Chase Elliott has been the best driver because he currently leads in Latford-era points, it’s worth noting that Larson is currently plummeting Elliott 19-8 in their teammate head-to-head, and I bet he would be leading in Latford points right now if he hadn’t missed the Coca-Cola 600. Granted, my model discounts DNFs and you can argue that some of Larson’s crashes were his fault, but Elliott isn’t even less crash-prone than him! (They are both currently tied with 15 incidents.) Although he will not win the title this year, he’s been pretty much overwhelmingly the best driver.

Another annoying undercurrent in racing discourse this year is that American oval racing fans have been trying to argue Larson is the best driver in the world based on his success across multiple disciplines of racing, leading to a lot of tedious Max Verstappen vs. Larson arguments and a lot of people sneering whenever he makes a mistake as a result of this. The most annoying example of this was when sports car driver Maro Engel dunked on him at the start of this year, even misspelling his name. Engel implied that in anything other than a stock car on an oval that any old F1/rally/sports car driver would outperform him, no doubt thinking of himself. Now Engel is a very good driver and he arguably had the best season of his career this year. I will be listing him in my top 200 this year (not sure about the 1,000), but he’s a Chris Buescher-level sports car talent, not one of the all-time greats. This is like if Buescher himself took a shot at Kévin Estre and called him a scrub, which would be equally ridiculous. While I think Verstappen is definitely better, I think it’s obvious that Larson is one of the best drivers in the world and the Cup Series certainly tends to have better competition. Having said that, a lot of the dirt racing fans act like only grassroots oval racing is real racing and sneer at road racers in much the same way and ultimately it’s exhausting. Larson does have a lot of flaws and his overdriving is one of them, and I do consider dirt racing to be a minor league so while his success there is definitely worth something, I still primarily judge him based on his Cup Series career, and aside from his 24 Hours of Daytona he does not have much in the way of major league wins elsewhere. I do think a lot of Americans don’t realize that there are actually a lot of drivers who win in multiple major league series (even currently) and Larson is not unique in this respect, and I’ve got to admit that I expected more from his Indy 500 run than he delivered. Having said that, at the very least he’s definitely the best American driver today without question.

As for my placement of Larson this year, I will definitely be ranking him below Max Verstappen and probably below Larry ten Voorde who won the Porsche Supercup and Porsche Carrera Cup Germany titles simultaneously along with 14 total wins and perhaps Sho Tsuboi, who looks like he’s going to win the Super Formula and Super GT titles simultaneously. So I’m thinking Larson will probably come out in about 4th or 5th this year. I might change my mind and put him higher or lower than that, but it feels like a top five season albeit only barely. If he’d made the Championship 4 and won it, I might have put him 2nd or 3rd.