It is notoriously difficult to see a truly great race car driver ever show us a lot of real, raw emotion. Not anger. We’ve all seen that plenty. Not celebratory joy. That’s what we see most, when the driver who has just pulled into Victory Lane finally shows us their face after it’s been hidden under a helmet for four hours. But by that time of revelation, they’ve typically already done all their real emoting when we couldn’t see them and what we get is the scripted, corporatized post-win photo and hat dance.
We never see tears. Ever. We might hear them, a quick choke of the throat caught over a racer’s radio transmission to their pit crew during the cooldown lap. But by the time that lap is done, the ice-in-their-veins drivers have long ago hit their temperament reset button and their once-wet eyes have completely dried.
Not being able to find a crack in that firewall of feeling has always been a bit maddening, particularly when it has come to Kyle Larson. But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, Larson, the just-crowned Cup Series champion, wept openly. Then he wept again. And again. In his car, caught on camera. On the pit lane during his live TV interview. In Victory Lane, amid celebrating the race win and the resulting championship. In the media center. During the late evening photo ops with the trophy.
“Just thinking about the journey and how tough of a road it’s been to get to this point for so long,” the 29-year-old explained when he was asked about what had produced so many repeated tears. “But especially the last year and a half.”
Larson has always been a master of the classic motorsports understated reaction. He has won hundreds of races across countless series and tracks, so once he started winning regularly in NASCAR’s Cup Series, the big leagues of American auto racing, he always stuck to the “act like you’ve been there” approach.
But where he has been over that past year and a half he keeps referring to, no racer has been before or since. A self-triggered trip into stock car purgatory, fired by Chip Ganassi Racing and banished from the NASCAR garage on April 13, 2020, for an inexplicable utterance of the N-word during a live broadcast of a pandemic lockdown video game competition.
On Nov. 8, 2020, Kyle Larson watched Chase Elliott celebrate winning the Cup no different than the rest of us, from a television in his living room. On Nov. 7, 2021, he outran now-teammate Elliott and three others to not only win NASCAR’s ultimate prize, he did so by way of the most dominant statistical season seen in nearly a decade and a half.
His 10 wins (11 if you include the non-points-paying NASCAR All-Star Race) was the most seen since Jimmie Johnson, also driving for Hendrick Motorsports, won that many races in 2007. He posted 20 top fives and 26 top 10s in 36 races, both first among all drivers, and his 2,581 laps led was nearly 1,100 more than the nearest competitor. He became only the seventh driver in 75 years of NASCAR racing to win a Cup Series title one year after not racing in the series full-time, and the first to do it since 1966.
What’s more, he also spent 2021 dominating the American short track scene at a level only matched by the likes of A.J. Foyt and drew comparisons from his Hendrick Motorsports boss, Jeff Gordon, to another auto racing cross-discipline demigod, Mario Andretti. From the Chili Bowl to the Knoxville Nationals to Sunday at Phoenix, it’s been an all-time Paul Bunyan-with-a-steering wheel type of season.
Now, what’s he going to do with all of that? Where will Larson, with “NASCAR Cup Series champion” forever affixed to his name, go from here? There are those who will say the answer to that question should be racing-only, that he has served his time of public shame and it’s time to move on.
But nothing with Larson will ever be that simple again.
To earn NASCAR reinstatement, he was required to spend 2020 undergoing sensitivity training, but he also chose to do more than was required. He traveled to see young Black racers that had once looked up to him as a hero and faced their questions of “Why would you say that word?” face to face. He was given history lessons on racial tensions in America by the people who run that program. Before the tears we saw at Phoenix on Sunday night, there were others we will never see, from those days in April 2020 when he called the likes of Bubba Wallace, Black members of his own race team, and then most painfully, his mother.
Janet Larson (née Miyata) is a Japanese-American woman who had been so proud of her son’s development, more easily embracing his Asian heritage as he grew into adulthood, researching his grandparents’ time in World War II internment camps and visiting youth centers to talk to Asian-American kids about his racing career. Now she was just mad.
NASCAR leadership continues to work to undo its once-well-earned reputation as a place unwilling to embrace diversity. That’s not what the garage is anymore. Anyone who was there years ago and is also there now, we are fully aware of the very different world that it has become. But there is still so much more work to do. Officials in business suits can only do so much. Ultimately, it will always be the racers in the firesuits who will have the greatest impact.
Say, showing how someone can learn from their stupidest mistake. Showing how someone can bomb their career and the reputation of their sport back to the Stone Age with one idiotic sentence, but if given a second chance can perhaps become a better person and even a better race car driver.
Larson has always been a tough nut to crack emotionally. As an interview subject, he has been downright maddening because he’d never allow himself to fully open up and dive as deeply into hard topics of conversation as it felt like he could if he would just give himself permission. Even when the subjects were his multiracial background or that he might be the first graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program to win the Cup.
But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, amid the most meaningful racing celebration of a lifetime that is marked by trophy after trophy, Larson finally cracked a door into his emotions. He finally let us in.
His potential impact as an educator and a game-changer for the audience that watches the sport he loves more than most anyone? This part of the gig was not his dream. This is the burden he’ll always carry because of the nightmare, one of his own ignorant creation. But if he does what he could — what he should — he might very well make some racing dreams come true for someone who thought their race might keep them out of racing.
If he chooses to do nothing for the short-term sake of taking the path of least resistance, he would be lowering his visor to the long-term damage. Silence will only bolster those who see NASCAR as still stuck in 1968, the perceived free pass given to the driver who dropped the N-word and then won the championship one year later. But Larson owning it publicly and carrying it with him as prominently as a sponsor on a car hood is the only way to convince anyone that anything has actually changed.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Austin Cindric was docked 50 points and fined $50,000 by NASCAR on Wednesday for intentionally spinning Ty Dillon in last weekend’s Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas.
Dillon moved Cindric up the track early in the race and Cindric quickly retaliated by hooking Dillon in the right rear, spinning Dillon’s car.
NASCAR has made clear they will not tolerate drivers hooking competitors in the right rear to spin them because of the potential hazards. Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott have both previously been suspended for similar actions.
The penalty drops Cindric of Team Penske from 11th to 35th in the standings heading into this weekend’s race at Phoenix Raceway.
NASCAR fined Carson Hocevar $50,000 and penalized him 25 points for intentionally wrecking Harrison Burton last year. Hocevar hooked Burton in the right rear while under caution at Nashville Superspeedway.
One of the reasons Cindric was not suspended, per a NASCAR official, is because it happened on a road course with lower speeds and tight confines — and the result didn’t draw a caution flag.
Wallace and Elliott both hooked other drivers on ovals with higher speeds that led to cautions.
In additional penalties announced Wednesday, NASCAR said two members of Kyle Larson‘s pit crew had been suspended two races for a tire coming off his car during last weekend’s Cup race at COTA. Brandon Johnson, the jackman, and front tire changer Blaine Anderson were both suspended.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Chase Briscoe and Joe Gibbs Racing won their appeal Wednesday when the National Motorsports Appeals Panel said his Toyota did not have an illegally modified spoiler when he won the Daytona 500 pole.
The victory restores the 100 points and 10 playoff points NASCAR had penalized Briscoe for the spoiler violation. The team also gets its 100 points and 10 playoff points back, and crew chief James Small’s four-race suspension was rescinded, as was the $100,000 fine to the team.
Briscoe is now tied for 14th in the season standings with Carson Hocevar headed into Sunday’s race at Phoenix Raceway. They are one point ahead of Kyle Larson, who is 16th in the season standings.
“The panel believes that the elongation of some of the holes on the number 19 Cup car spoiler base is caused by the process of attaching that specific spoiler base to the rear deck and not modification of the single source part,” the panel wrote.
Joe Gibbs said he was appreciative of the process “NASCAR has in place that allowed us the opportunity to present our explanation of what led to the penalty issued to our No. 19 team.
“We are thankful for the consideration and ruling by the National Motorsports Appeals Panel,” the team owner added. “It is obviously great news for our 19 team and everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing. We look forward to focusing on the remainder of our season starting this weekend in Phoenix.”
Briscoe also thanked the panel and NASCAR on social media “for giving us the option to show our evidence.” He also thanked Joe Gibbs Racing for preparing his car for his debut season with the team.
The appeals panel consisted of former motorsports marketing executive Dixon Johnston, former Speed Channel president Hunter Nickell and former South Boston Speedway general manager Cathy Rice.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR’s revenue-sharing charter system is under threat of being disbanded according to a Wednesday counterclaim filed by the stock car series against Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports that singles out Jordan’s longtime business manager.
The contentiousness began after more than two years of negotiations on new charter agreements — NASCAR’s equivalent of a franchise model — and the 30-page filing contends that Jordan business manager Curtis Polk “willfully” violated antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct in connection with the most recent charter agreements.
23XI and Front Row were the only two organizations out of 15 that refused to sign the new agreements, which were presented to the teams last September in a take-it-or-leave-it offer a mere 48 hours before the start of NASCAR’s playoffs.
The charters were fought for by the teams ahead of the 2016 season and twice have been extended. The latest extension is for seven years to match the current media rights deal and guarantee 36 of the 40 spots in each week’s field to the teams that hold them, as well as other financial incentives. 23XI and Front Row refused to sign and sued, alleging NASCAR and the France family that owns the stock car series are a monopoly.
NASCAR already has lost one round in court in which the two teams have been recognized as chartered organizations for the 2025 season as the legal dispute winds through the courts.
What is NASCAR counterclaiming?
In the new counterclaim, Polk is repeatedly singled out as the ringleader against the current charter proposals. NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates went so far as to tell The Associated Press that Polk, who in addition to being Jordan’s business manager is a co-owner of 23XI along with three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, does not understand the NASCAR business model.
“Curtis Polk basically orchestrated and threatened a boycott of one of the qualifying races for a major event and others did not go along with him,” Yates said. “He got other teams to boycott a meeting that was required by the charter. When you have a threatened boycott of qualifying races that are covered by media that’s not a good thing for other race teams, not a good thing when you are trying to collectively grow the sport.”
The qualifying race in question was the 2024 pair of 150-mile duels that set the field for the Daytona 500.
“I don’t think Mr. Polk really understands the sport,” Yates told the AP. “I think he came into it and his view is it should be much more like the NBA or other league sports. But it’s not. No motorsport is like that. He’s done a lot of things that might work in the NBA or might be OK in the NBA but just are not appropriate in NASCAR.”
Who is violating the antitrust act?
NASCAR’s complaint alleges “the undisputed reality is that it is 23XI and FRM, led by 23XI’s owner and sports agent Curtis Polk, that willfully violated the antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct in connection with the terms of the 2025 Charter Agreements.”
“It is truly ironic that in trying to blow-up the Charter system, 23XI and FRM have sought to weaponize the antitrust laws to achieve their goals,” the counterclaim says, alleging Polk’s threats are “attempting to misuse the legal system as a last resort to secure new terms.”
Bob Jenkins, an entrepreneur, owns Front Row Motorsports and joined 23XI in the lawsuit when he declined to sign the 2025 charter agreement last September.
NASCAR’s counterclaim asks for an injunction eliminating guaranteed starting spots for charter teams. NASCAR wants the four combined charters held by 23XI and Front Row before the lawsuit to be returned to NASCAR, and it wants to dissolve the two charters each team purchased ahead of the 2025 season for their own individual expansion.
“There’s a misperception out there that somehow 23IX and Front Row might achieve something that other teams can take advantage of, and that’s just not right,” Yates told the AP. “This is not going to be a renegotiation. NASCAR has no intent of renegotiating the terms of the charter. Front Row and 23XI are threatening the charter system and its continuation, and NASCAR is fine without the charter system.
“The charter system was created at the request of the teams. That was before 23XI and Curtis Polk’s time, I don’t think they understand that history. But if they succeed with their lawsuit and the charter system goes away, that’s OK.”
What do 23XI and Front Row want?
Yates told the AP he’s asked Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney representing 23XI and Front Row, what is it the two teams want and cannot get a straight answer.
“The mere fact that the lawsuit calls the system into question, I really think 23XI and Front Row are being pretty selfish in terms of what they are trying to do, and I don’t think they are taking into account the 32 teams that have signed the charters and think it is a good deal for them,” Yates said. “Do some of them think they should have gotten more? I’m sure. Does NASCAR think it should have gotten more? Absolutely. But NASCAR does not see the charter system as necessary.”
Jordan has said he’s suing NASCAR on behalf of all the teams so that even the smallest ones can receive equal footing in terms of benefits as a participant in the top motorsports league in the United States.
Among the improvements in the 2025 charters is a more equitable revenue share, but missing is the demand that teams wanted the charters to become permanent. NASCAR at its discretion can claw back charters from underperforming teams or eliminate the system completely. Yates said NASCAR has no intention of renegotiating the charters signed in September by 13 organizations, nor did he see a scenario in which NASCAR settles the lawsuit.
“Polk and 23XI’s other owners openly professed that they wanted to change NASCAR’s economic model by demanding more money for the teams from NASCAR media revenues, instead of teams competing against each other,” Yates said. “However, 23XI and FRM did not merely reject the terms of the 2025 Charters. Rather, those teams embarked on a strategy to threaten, coerce, and extort NASCAR into meeting their demands for better contract and financial terms.”
