Few drivers are as equipped to run at the front of the pack as Kyle Larson. But Larson has had a few key missteps that have put him behind the 8-ball early in the season in the new championship format in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Larson has recorded a pair of 32nd-place finishes this year in six races, both due to mistakes in the car. It has led insiders to wonder if the new playoff format might actually be detrimental to Larson’s style of racing: high risk, high reward.

In the previous championship format, winning races was the ticket. Win a race and you were locked into the championship race.

Now, drivers compete across the first 26 races to be among the top 16 drivers on points. Then they duke it out across the final 10 races for supremacy. Kyle Larson currently sits in 10th in the points standings after dropping three places after Darlington.

“There was a big storyline coming into this year of, ‘Will Larson have to race any differently with this point system?’” The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck said on The Teardown podcast. “And he kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’ And there was a lot of evidence for that, right? Because last season he would have won the championship overall. He had the most overall points, say, if it was a 36-race thing.”

However, so far this year, things haven’t quite worked out that way for Kyle Larson. He trails leader Tyler Reddick by 149 points, nearly double the 176 he has accumulated so far.

Gluck noted the mistakes are glaring. They’ve been costly.

“But then you see these mistakes, the moment where he comes across SVG’s nose,” Gluck said. “Pits from four lanes down or whatever, right? And you’re just like, ‘Man, what was that?’ Then (at Darlington), running alone, 10 laps to go, just hits the wall. I mean, giving up points, it really is going to matter. These moments really come back to bite you in this kind of system.”

The mistake with Shane van Gisbergen at Atlanta was a big one. Larson was running in third as the end of Stage 2 approached. He misjudged a block and hit the outside wall, ending his day. Not only did he finish in 32nd, but he also missed the easy stage points.

Fellow insider for The Athletic, Jordan Bianchi, also weighed in on the topic. He spoke to crew chief Cliff Daniels and provided some more insight.

“We had a conversation that was background, off the record,” Bianchi said. “I’ll just say Cliff is like this is the adversity you’re going to learn from and these are the moments we’re going to be tested. Because we’re still, we may not be hitting on all cylinders right now, but we’re still a top-10 team. That tells you we need to clean up our mistakes and that kind of thing, but we’re going to be OK. There’s no need to panic. We need to be better, obviously, but if this is where we’re being judged on right now we’re going to be OK because we can build off of this.”

Can Kyle Larson overcome the early hiccups? There’s still more than enough time to do so.

It’s just a matter of ironing things out, racing smarter and putting together consistent top results. If anyone’s capable, it’s the driver of the No. 5 car.

“This is what builds teams. Adversity,” Bianchi said. “You go back to Reddick in 2025. Tyler Reddick didn’t win a race. Now Tyler Reddick is unbeatable, apparently. You’re going to have these moments and you’ve got to figure it out and that’s kind of where they’re at right now.”