Jay Busbee Senior writer Mon, November 9, 2026 at 9:15 PM UTC · 5 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Dale Earnhardt wasn't one for candy bars. But Earnhardt loved winning races, satisfying sponsors, and trolling his enemies, and not in that order. So he would have appreciated the poke-in-the-eye demonstration by Kyle Larson and his team right after Larson claimed his third NASCAR Cup Series championship Sunday night.
Flanked by team owner Rick Hendrick, crew chief Cliff Daniels, and Earnhardt's old rival Jeff Gordon, Larson et al. performatively munched on Snickers. The move was a long-simmering shot at Denny Hamlin, who'd declared earlier in the season that Hendrick wasn't racing up to its abilities and needed a Snickers to get back to itself again. Revenge is best served in Homestead with a trophy by your side.
(Snickers isn't a NASCAR sponsor anymore, and when they were they aligned with Joe Gibbs Racing, but this kind of positive exposure might entice them back.)
Thing is, Hamlin was right, and Larson admits as much. He had some decent early-season runs, including a second-place finish at Kansas and third-place finishes in Bristol and Phoenix. But he also had some absolute bombs; he finished 32nd or below in four of the year's first 11 races. That's not exactly a championship pedigree.
"Early in the year, it was just, like, 'Gosh, we're so bad right now,''" Larson told Yahoo Sports Monday morning, less than 24 hours after lifting the championship trophy. "I was just, like, 'Man, this is gonna be a miserable year. How are we going to pull through?' So to ultimately end up capping off the year with a championship, it's just insane."
Larson raced well enough to finish the regular season seventh in the standings, but he didn't exactly roll into the playoffs as a serious threat. He hadn't won a race in 51 attempts, and there was no indication he was about to start anytime soon.
"I felt like we were still capable of winning if things went right," he said. "And I was still doing dirt racing and winning in that, so I think that gave me the motivation that I know how to drive, we've just got to get our cars a little closer. I'm sure it felt longer for Cliff, but for me it wasn't too bad. I just stayed committed to our process."
And then everything paid off, all at once.
"Once the Chase started and we went to Darlington — we didn't win, but we finished fifth — I felt like we just executed a really good race and our car was pretty fast," he said. "Felt like, 'All right, we can keep this up, and we'll see what happens. And then, boom, we went to Gateway the next week and won. Really from that point forward, it was like, all right, we are definitely in this."
He was more than just "in" the playoffs, he was in charge of them. Starting with that Gateway win and following through Bristol, Kansas and Las Vegas, Larson unfurled an astounding run, finishing 1-2-1-2 to surge to a massive playoff lead. A late-season victory at Talladega, Larson's first on a superspeedway, all but iced the championship and turned Sunday into a high-speed coronation.
Kyle Larson all but clinched his third Cup title with a victory at Talladega in October.
"In sports, confidence can really carry you a long way," he said. "Our confidence built very rapidly and quickly. It was just crazy how it snowballed into good finishes each and every week."
NASCAR's new Chase format was intended as something of a throwback, a design to reward consistency, keep more drivers active in the postseason and reduce the gimmickry associated with the elimination rounds of the last decade. But Larson basically broke the format by running so well in the first five races and outdistancing all challengers at Talladega. As a result, he ran a largely drama-free race at the season finale in Homestead with the title all but assured. He didn't even realize he'd clinched the title until, in an anticlimactic fashion, he was notified over the radio that he was the 2026 champion.
"They have declared it," Daniels told Larson during the second stage of the race.
"That was anticlimactic," Larson said, "but that's cool."
"I thought I had to finish third (in the first stage) to gain the points I needed to lock it up," he said Monday. "So I finished fourth and I was like, 'All right, we've still got to go get one more point.' I wasn't even thinking about locking it up, so I was a bit surprised (to get the call) and didn't know how to react. I was just happy and relieved, I guess, to clinch that early on."
Larson's third title puts him in rare company, tying him with legends like Darrell Waltrip, Tony Stewart and Cale Yarborough. Just four men — Richard Petty, Jimmie Johnson, Earnhardt and Gordon — have more titles than Larson. He's won championships under two different formats, the elimination-rounds playoff era of 2021 and 2025, and this year's all-in, 10-race Chase.
Another reason why Earnhardt, who won his fifth championship a few months before Larson was born, would have loved the now three-time champion: Larson never quits racing. He'll be back at it this weekend, racing midget and sprint cars out in California.
After a family vacation to the Bahamas, he'll be in the home stretch of training for the California International Marathon — yes, a foot race — in early December. He's spent the second half of the NASCAR season training, including a 15-mile run in the Florida heat two days before Homestead, and is prepared to take on yet another style of racing. There's no quit in this guy.
"I'm excited about that," he said. "I don't have super-high expectations or anything."
The last time Kyle Larson entered a race without super-high expectations, he ended up with a championship. We're not saying he's going to break records or qualify for the Olympics in his next act, but then we're not not saying that, either.
Source: Sports
0 Comments