It’s been three months since the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series ended, yet Kyle Larson’s phenomenal performance remains a hot topic of discussion in the NASCAR circles. And while the 2022 season will introduce many changes to the competition, many still believe that the 29-year-old is the man to beat, with many PA sports betting sites, such as Unibet, pricing Larson as one of the favorites (+300) to claim his second crown.
It’s fair to expect the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series to be much different from last year, introducing 670 horsepower Next Gen cars, but will that affect Larson? And will the changes stop the improvement the California-born NASCAR driver showed the previous season?
There is no clear answer to that, but what we do know is that Larson has produced what many believe to be impossible and went from a mid-tier talent to a NASCAR Cup Series champion in a year. Even more impressive is that he won the 2021 season with ten wins, which earned him a spot in an elite club of drivers who ended the year with double-digit wins.
Performance as such is undoubtedly fit for the history book. Still, it also brings up two important questions – will Larson manage to keep the wind in his sails and push for his second title, and was his showing in 2021 purely luck, or maybe it had to do with his talent and work ethic? Some may argue that you need some luck to win the NASCAR crown, but there is no denying that the latter two factors played a considerable part in Larson’s success story.
Larson’s work ethic is one to behold, and it set a new standard to what is expected from the next NASCAR Cup Series champion. Everyone has heard of the saying: ” talent is nothing without dedication,” and Larson is a prime example of that.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. Even the 2018 and 2019 Xfinity Series champion Tyler Reddick has noticed how hard Larson competes at the highest level. And he did not shy away from sharing his thoughts on Larson and praising him for his dedication to the sport.
“When I think of somebody that spends as much time in a race car as possible, trying to learn and trying to get better, Larson has got everybody beat by a lot,” said Reddick.
And while it may sound like Reddick is simply praising Larson, there is solid evidence that the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion truly works night and day, 24/7, to become the best at his craft. Besides claiming the NASCAR crown, Larson also attended and won the Chili Bowl Nationals, the Prairie Dirt Classic, the Knoxville Nationals, and Kings Royal sprint car race.
For years now, drivers were told to avoid any extra-curricular racing, but for Larson, these races presented just another chance to perfect his craft and become the best NASCAR driver in the world. And it worked.
“I race so much, and I openly talk about how it makes me a better race car driver and then to have the results on the Cup side has, I think, definitely convinced some owners that it works,” said Larson.
Although he has only recently won his first NASCAR Cup Series title, Larson’s dominance in 2021 has likely made many drivers and team owners rethink their strategy heading into the 2022 season. The mindset that the drivers should focus on NASCAR Cup Series races alone was thrown out of the window by the recently crowned champion, proving that everyone can do a bit more to become the best driver in the field.
It remains to be seen whether other drivers have learned anything from it or whether anyone will take the lessons seriously. But for at least for some of the younger drivers, who have yet to have a breakthrough season, Larson could be an actual role model. That is at least as far as work ethics are concerned, and less so for his incident during the iRacing stream in 2020, which saw Larson get kicked out of the Chip Hanassi Racing.
The 2022 NASCAR Cup Series will kick off on Sunday, February 6, with the pre-season race, the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in California. The pre-season race will see the drivers compete for over 150 laps (37.5 miles) as a warm-up race ahead of Bluegreen Vacations Duel, leading into the opening race of the season, the Daytona 500, on February 20.
