Kyle Larson smiled at the question but quickly clarified that, just because he is the only driver in the Championship Four field to have won a NASCAR Cup Series Championship previously, he does not necessarily consider himself a \u2018favorite\u201d this weekend at Phoenix Raceway.<\/p>\n
There is no edge with this group of competitors, the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion contends.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, we could all probably think up a reason of why there could be an edge that I would have,\u201d said Larson, who drives the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. \u201cWe\u2019re all just so good and the teams are so good, I just don\u2019t buy into anything like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019ll see. I think having won before, I am a champion, so if I win another one, great. if I don\u2019t, I\u2019m still on the list. There\u2019s that. But I don\u2019t think that gives you any sort of competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old Californian has three victories and topped 1,000 laps led in a season for the fifth time in his career. His 21 top-10 finishes are most among the four title contenders, and only Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Chase Briscoe (15) has more top fives than Larson (14).<\/p>\n
Although he hasn\u2019t won a race since May 11 at Kansas, Larson is confident his team is in good shape, perhaps even peaking at the right time. He\u2019s got 14 top-10 finishes in 22 Phoenix starts\u2014a win to land him the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship and top-five finishes in four of the last five races at the desert one-miler.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust really excited to get on track and see if it\u2019s what I expect it to be. But all four of us are going to be really good,\u201d Larson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all have experience winning here,\u201d he said pausing and smiling, \u201cBut I\u2019d really like to win this fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chase Briscoe eyes title in first year with Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n
Last year at Phoenix Raceway, Chase Briscoe was reluctant to leave the race track.<\/p>\n
He had just run his last race with his No. 14 team at Stewart-Haas Racing, not as part of the Championship 4 but as a driver for a team that was shutting its doors at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
It was the end of a dream for Briscoe and the beginning of another fraught with uncertainty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is crazy, what a difference a year can make,\u201d Briscoe said on Thursday during Championship 4 Media Day at the Phoenix one-mile track. \u201cYou go from being sad and down in the dumps\u2026 I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s just weird.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the last people to leave last year, because we didn\u2019t want it to end. We knew when we walked out of the tunnel that that group would never be together again. They literally kicked us out. They forced us to leave. We were here longer than the champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut hopefully this year, I\u2019m the one that\u2019s here the longest again.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, Briscoe won the Southern 500, the regular-season cutoff race. That earned him an unexpected berth in the Playoffs, but he was out in the Round of 12.<\/p>\n
After moving to Joe Gibbs Racing this year, Briscoe has three victories, the most recent of which, at Talladega, propelled him into the Championship Race.<\/p>\n
Briscoe\u2019s Stewart-Haas group, however, hasn\u2019t abandoned him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week, all the 14 guys\u2014we still have a group chat\u2014they all were sending me motivational videos and trying to pump me up. (Former crew chief Richard) Boswell sent me a text this morning and sent me a video of all his kids wishing me good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Briscoe is the only one of the Championship 4 drivers who hasn\u2019t raced for a NASCAR Cup title in the season finale. Even before he drove a JGR car for the first time, Briscoe knew expectations were high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve raced against Joe Gibbs Racing, so I knew that, if everything went well, there was a very good likelihood that you\u2019d be racing for a championship,\u201d he said. \u201cYear one\u2014I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s surprising, but it also I would say exceeded expectations for year one, for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would mean a lot to do it in year one, just with everything, with Coach (Joe Gibbs) obviously taking a chance on me. Just to start our tenure off together winning a championship would be pretty cool, but it would certainly make the expectations going forward way harder.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle Larson smiled at the question but quickly clarified that, just because he is the only driver in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,10660,7574,13157,4384,12101,4386,12716,634,582,721,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-251274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chase","11":"tag-chevrolet","12":"tag-group","13":"tag-hendrick-motorsports","14":"tag-joe-gibbs-racing","15":"tag-kyle-larson","16":"tag-motorsports","17":"tag-nascar","18":"tag-racing","19":"tag-series","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}