Kyle Larson, Hendricks team staying focused on Martinsville one week before Phoenix
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
Kyle Larson would be forgiven if he wishes he could head to Phoenix Raceway for the NASCAR Cup Series championship race this weekend, instead of having to wait another week.
When a driver has won three consecutive races, the driver wants to capitalize on that momentum.
But Larson doesn’t have that luxury. He must head, along with the rest of the Cup field, to Martinsville Speedway this weekend. As the only driver who has locked himself in as one of the four drivers who will compete for the title a week later at Phoenix, Larson will try not to get ahead of himself.
"Knowing that I have a shot to race for a championship, like, the anticipation definitely rises each day," he said. "So in a way, yes, I wish we could go to Phoenix tomorrow and get it done and get racing.
"But I am excited to get to Martinsville. I'm always excited to get to Martinsville until I start turning laps and I realize that I've not learned anything from the times before."
Larson knows about trying to handle anticipation. He spent several years attempting to win the Chili Bowl, the biggest event for drivers of midget cars. The race annually attracts more than 300 drivers from across the world, and with his racing roots on dirt and in midgets and sprint cars, Larson grew up idolizing the winners of that race.
The format for the Chili Bowl has drivers split into four or five qualifying nights, which set up which heat a driver must compete in on the day of the main event to try to race their way into the main event. The top drivers in the qualifying nights automatically advance to the main event.
Having gone through that experience, Larson believes that dealing with the anxiousness about competing for the Cup championship won’t be as difficult, though he has never before advanced to the championship in NASCAR.
"I haven't lived it yet," he said. "We're not into the week of Phoenix yet. But I feel like Chili Bowl — I always run early in the week. I've won however many prelim nights now, and then I sit all week and watch all these other racers go out there.
"I, like, psych myself out every yea, like, ‘Man, they look better than I do. They're fast. It's going to be hard to beat them and this and that.’"
Larson doesn’t think there will be as much opportunity for overthinking this time, even though there will be practice and qualifying at Phoenix.
"We get to practice and stuff, but ... I think there's less time for me to psych myself out because I'm not sitting in the stands watching these guys race," he said. "I'm still out there racing in these weeks and winning and gaining confidence and all that."
Although Larson has never competed in the Cup final before, about eight members of the team — two in the shop, three members of the road crew that works on the car and three members of the over-the-wall pit crew — have championship race experience.
Crew chief Cliff Daniels said the team’s experience at the Charlotte road course — where they were on the brink of elimination, fixed the car and ended up winning the race — has prepared them for the pressure of the championship race and will help them deal with any anxiousness leading into next week.
"Halfway through that race, it looks dismal, and then we got it turned around," he said.
"Knowing the internal pressure we put on ourselves for a race like that, I don’t know that there are 10 extra steps out there that we would even take to go to Phoenix. There isn’t a great deal more than what we already are pushing ourselves to do."
The key for Larson and the team continues to be focusing on the race at hand, and that is what they have tried to do entering Martinsville. Daniels admitted that he has moments of "certainly butterflies, the excitement, the anticipation, some anxious energy, sure."
But he also has his eyes on Martinsville.
"There is a cadence to how our whole team prepares," he said. "Everybody has bought in, everybody believes in it. If I went to them ... and said, ‘We’re going to ignore Martinsville and focus on Phoenix,’ they're just not going to listen to me.
"We are going to stay focused on our path, what it is going to take to go to Martinsville. Of course, we have our eyes on Phoenix. We're going to prepare like we should to go there, but we've just got to keep going."
Every organization works weeks ahead, and Hendrick Motorsports is no exception. The tire used at Phoenix (a 1-mile track) is the same one used at New Hampshire (1.058-mile) and Richmond (0.75-mile). Pretty much everything the team needed to know for its Phoenix setup was known after the Richmond race in mid-September. Martinsville, a 0.526-mile track, is not similar enough for teams to take much from Sunday and implement it for Phoenix.
So while there is a perception, with Larson having won Texas to open the semifinal round two weeks ago, that his team has extra time to massage its Phoenix car, Daniels indicated that there are enough people at Hendrick Motorsports that the car was already getting as much attention as it would have even if Larson had not won.
"That [Phoenix prep] started before any of us even knew whether we were going to make it to [this] Round of 8," Daniels said. "My Phoenix car is an older chassis. We did a few updates on it and got a body put on it the week before Talladega [four weeks ago].
"Your cars get built that far in advance. ... We were planning for that car even back then, under the context that this could be a car that makes it in the final four, so we’re not going to have any shortcuts or miss any details. Those cars, by nature, have more attention."
Nothing will get more attention than Larson himself. Part of his anxious energy has to be the feeling that after winning nine times this year (10 if counting the all-star race), not winning the championship would be a bitter disappointment. However, most drivers and teams indicate that they try to gauge their seasons on making it to the championship race, rather than winning it, just because one race is so unpredictable.
"It's, like, hard for me to think if people will really remember if you don't win the championship now at this point," Larson said.
"Not that it adds pressure, but you can read into it adding pressure that I want to win the championship even more to cap off what's been a great season. So that's my goal. And I hope we can finish it off with being mentioned in one of the top five greatest seasons ever."
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Playoff meter
What to watch for
Many of the drivers on the brink of elimination who need to win Sunday at Martinsville ... have won at Martinsville:
Kyle Busch (one point above the cutline) won at Martinsville in 2016 and 2017. Denny Hamlin (32 points above the cutline) won in 2015.
Ryan Blaney (one point below the cutline) has never won at Martinsville, but Martin Truex Jr. (three points below the cutline) has won three of the past four races there. The only one he didn’t win was this elimination race a year ago, which was won by Chase Elliott (34 points above the cutline) on his way to the title.
The driver six points below the cutline, Brad Keselowski, won in 2017 and 2019 at Martinsville; Joey Logano (26 points below the cutline) won in 2018 on his way to the title.
In fact, you have to go back to 2014 (Kurt Busch) for a Martinsville Cup winner who will be in the race Sunday and isn’t trying to make it into the Championship 4.
Thinking out loud
NASCAR doesn’t need to panic over the fact that Formula 1 had an awesomely attended weekend at Circuit of the Americas, while NASCAR has had two weeks of somewhat frustrating crowds at Texas and Kansas.
It is easy to point fingers, but the bottom line is what gives people a passion for drivers or teams. Formula 1 has the benefit of drivers who pretty much represent their countries and manufacturers that currently have more widespread loyalty among their fan bases than the three manufacturers in NASCAR.
NASCAR hopes the Next Gen will create more passion among fans of manufacturers, but how it addresses creating fandom for its drivers could be a bigger hurdle, with the current model of drivers not racing at their local tracks for all that long and instead racing regional and national series early in their careers.
Next Up: Next Gen
Tony Stewart conducted a tire test Tuesday at Bowman Gray Stadium as NASCAR prepares to create a similar stadium-style track for the Clash in February at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Clint Bowyer (FOX analyst) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (NBC) also took a handful of laps in the car to help them understand the direction of the new car on race telecasts.
Stewart has not been in a Cup in five years and didn’t have much to compare the Next Gen car to, considering that he never ran a Cup race at Bowman Gray, the track that circles the football field at Winston-Salem State University and the track made popular by the "Madhouse" television series several years ago.
"Goodyear had a good plan coming into today, and I think they’re pretty happy with the results that they got," Stewart said in a statement released by NASCAR. "I think what they brought with the control set is probably a little harder than what they need. They brought a softer tire, and they were pretty happy with it, and I think that’s probably a combination of what they’ll bring out West."
NASCAR’s next big organizational test of the Next Gen car will be Nov. 17-18 on the Charlotte oval, where more than 20 cars are expected.
Social spotlight
They said it
"There was probably a lot of reflecting over the last half a dozen weeks, but now with the task at hand to try and win the championship, there’s not a lot of time to reflect." — Brad Keselowski on his mindset heading into his final two races at Team Penske
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!
Kyle Busch
Hendrick Motorsports
