Kyle Larson is one of the busiest NASCAR drivers. Away from his full-time duties for Hendrick Motorsports, he races extensively in the High Limit Racing Series, the World of Outlaws, and other dirt platforms. These indulgences have made his love for sprint car racing very apparent over the past several years. But would he prioritize it over NASCAR?
He mentioned in a recent interview with The Athletic that fans often get it wrong by assuming he would.
He said, “People back in the day used to get it wrong that I didn’t care about NASCAR. I still think people think, “Oh, I’m just doing this for the money, and if I had a choice, I’d be racing sprint cars all the time.”
“That really bugs me, because it isn’t about the money. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love it, you know? So I do love this. I wish fans would realize that,” the 32-year-old explained.
Larson has been racing full-time in the Cup Series since 2014. He is a Cup Series champion and is poised to become one of the greatest stock car racing drivers to have ever lived. Such achievements are not attainable without a strong love for the game.
One of the biggest reasons why he races dirt a lot is the practice that it offers for him to perform better in NASCAR. Especially with practice sessions before Cup Series races now limited, such extracurricular racing can help a lot.
So, it wouldn’t really be fair to claim that he would jump ship to sprint car racing if it offered him the same paycheck as NASCAR does. And yet, that’s exactly what the three-time Cup Series champion, Tony Stewart, did earlier this year.
Tony Stewart’s take on Larson’s NASCAR loyalty
Stewart is one of Larson’s mentors. They are quite similar in how they love racing outside NASCAR. It is with this position that Stewart said last month, “If the money was equal – and I’m not going to speak for Kyle (Larson) and Kyle and I have never had this conversation – but I feel very confident in this statement that if the money was equal, that Kyle Larson would be in a sprint car, not in a Cup car.”
That’s a bold claim. He had gone on to make the same statement about Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, avid dirt racers. He continued, “And like I’ve said, I’ve never had this conversation with any of those guys about it, but that’s my gut instinct, that’s what my gut tells me that if the money was equal, they’d be on dirt, they’d not be in NASCAR right now.”
The dirt racing series of today aren’t going to be able to compete with NASCAR on financial grounds any time soon. The only scenario in which these words can be tested is if NASCAR purchases one of the platforms like how it purchased the ARCA Series in 2018 and raises the purse sizes. Only then would we truly know whether Larson would stay in stock cars or switch to sprint cars.
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