[h=2]'I'm the first guy out there to search around for grip' - Larson[/h] By Eric Johnson / Images by LAT

After nearly winning the Daytona 500, Sacramento's Kyle Larson kept on chugging to place runner-up at the last three straight Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races. Throwing another log on the fire, Larson hotfooted it to the pole on Friday afternoon at Auto Club Speedway which will now see him start the fifth race of the season from P1. We caught up with him afterward...



Happy to be racing here in your home state?
"Yeah, I am. I mean it's a long way from home still because California is so long, but it's definitely always nice to be out west and I'm enjoying the West Coast swing. Yeah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully we can have another solid race and just continue our consistency."
Four races into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and you're leading in points. That has to me very encouraging to both you and the team.
"It's awesome. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome to be the point leader right now. Hopefully, we can just keep it going. It would be nice to stay the point leader throughout the regular season – we just have to stay consistent, finish all the races, finish every lap and hopefully throw a few wins in there and we'll have a good year."
Your consistency has been amazing. You could very well have won the Daytona 500 and you placed second at Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix. That's about as good as it gets, huh?
"Yeah, even at the end of last year, we ran third at Phoenix and then second at Homestead, so I finished second in four of the last five races. Obviously, it would be nice to get a win, but the consistency has been something that I've struggled with in the past. It's nice that we've got that going for us right now."
What do you attribute the consistency to? Experience? Equipment?
"I think the biggest thing now is having really good racecars everywhere we go. That's the main part because in the past I've been in a mid-pack car and maybe been overly aggressive trying to make up a little bit of ground and make mistakes and crash or hit the wall or abuse my tires and blow a tire. Yeah, the main thing is our cars are better, but then this is my fourth year in the Cup series and I think you just gain experience and learn to be patient and all that."
You were the 2013 Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year, and a year later, the Cup Rookie of the Year. Graduating up into the elite division here is an entirely different mountain to climb, isn't it?
"This is as tough as it gets. The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series is extremely tough. There are so many teams that have great resources. Every driver is great in this garage. There are millions of dollars flowing through every race team, so everybody is spending a lot of money to be the best. The competition is just really tight. Yeah, it makes it tough to run up front and win races, but it makes it more satisfying when you do run up front and get those wins."
And not only have you been extremely competitive and consistent, but you've managed to do it on radically different racetracks.
"Yeah, we hit a lot of different-style racetracks so far early in the year and we've been good at every one of them – so far. Yeah, I'm extremely proud of everybody at our race shop and how hard they've worked throughout last year and being able to carry it over to this year. It's so tough here... We're good right now, but we have to continue to keep working hard because the garage is always changing and teams are getting better and we have to keep up with that and try and get better and better every week."
Your USAC midget and sprint car exploits are the stuff of legend. Does any of that open-wheel learning and experience apply here in Cup?
"Yeah, I definitely think you can take some of my open-wheel stuff and apply it to NASCAR. Aggression is the main thing. Restarts, I feel that being a dirt racer really helps with that when I'm mid-pack and need to gain a lot of spots. Searching for different racing lines is probably the one thing that helps me the most. These are all pavement tracks that we race on now, but the line here changes a lot throughout the day due to temperature and rubber on the racetrack. Me being able to kind of search around for that grip is good. I think a lot of people who just raced stock cars or just pavement stuff their whole life, they're a little slower to maybe move around. But yeah, I definitely feel like I'm the first guy out there to search around for grip."
I love watching you move all over the racetrack and run up high along the wall and all that. That's all sprint car experience, huh?
"I like to run the top. I seem to find more speed up there. It feels similar to running the cushion in a dirt car. I'm definitely comfortable up there and can go fast, but a lot of times it bites me and I get in the wall and end up hurting my race. I've got to be smarter with that."
Some of the younger drivers that receive a lot of attention at the Cup level – Chase Elliott, Austin Dillon and Ryan Blaney – they were, to a degree, born into stock car racing and came up through the ranks a bit differently than you did. Do you know those guys pretty well?
"Yeah, and I know their backgrounds, for sure. Their stories are pretty cool and how they got to NASCAR. I know a lot of people give Austin Dillon a lot of crap for having the golden spoon on his way up, but he's extremely talented and you can't take that away from him. He's won a Truck championship and an Xfinity championship. Like I said earlier, I feel like the best drivers are in our sport."
You won a race and made the postseason in 2016. Are you there now? Can you make a run at the final four come Homestead in November?
"If we can continue to have the speed that we have right now, and even make that better, there is no reason why that why we can't contend for the championship. In the Chase, those are a lot of my good racetracks. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings. If we can get to the final four at Homestead, that's my best track, so there is no reason why we couldn't be considered the favorite there. We just need to keep working hard, and hopefully we get a little bit of luck along the way and try and win the championship."
You strike me as the ultimate racer and I get the sense that this is all you're ever going to be, but that's just straight-up cool, huh?
"Yeah, I mean it's all I'm ever going to be and it's all I've ever done. I don't want to call myself a natural born racer, but I was never good at any other sports or really participate in any other sports but racing. This is what I did, what I loved and it was what I was good at. I'm glad this is my job-job. It's all pretty cool. I love racing. It's nice to get paid, but I'd still be doing it even if I didn't get paid."

 

Target to exit NASCAR when 2017 deal ends

Friday, 28 July 2017


By RACER Staff / Image by Russell LaBounty/LAT


Target will not renew its deal with Kyle Larson’s Chip Ganassi Racing Chevy after 2017, completing an exit from motorsports at the end of its current contract.
"Over the past season, Target has worked closely with Chip Ganassi Racing on this transition. We have incredible respect for Chip and the talented team he has assembled, and are confident they will continue to see great success for years to come,” Katie Boyland, senior vice president of communications for Target, said in a statement.

Having partnered with Ganassi since 1990, Target announced last July that it was ending its 27-year relationship with Ganassi’s IndyCar program at the end of 2016. The longstanding tie between CGR and Target was bolstered by a close relationship between Ganassi and the company's former CEO, but with a change atop Target's management team in 2014, the first cracks in the IndyCar sponsorship program formed that season as Target reduced its commitment from two cars to a single entry for Dixon.
Target has had a presence with Ganassi in NASCAR since 2002. In late 2016 Target cut back on the number of races in which Target would serve as Larson’s primary sponsor. The company, through both its Target and other vendor brands such as Axe, Energizer, and Clorox, has been Larson's sole sponsor since he joined the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2014.
"I have had an unbelievable relationship with Target for 28 years, and I have to thank them for their long-time support," Ganassi said.
CGR president Steve Lauletta told SportsBusiness Daily that the organization will look to replicate something similar to a deal with sponsors such as Credit One Bank, which sponsored the No. 1 of Jamie McMurray for a handful of races before moving several races to the 42.
“[The Credit One sponsorship has] been a great success all around, and now we’ll just have to do that again, and we will do that again,” he told SBD. “We feel like the potential for us is just sort of starting, and we’re happy that we’ve got a lot of conversations already going on that we can now put Kyle and the No. 42 in the middle of and get ourselves set for the future.”
SBD reports that CGR has a multi-race sponsor for the season that is new to both the team and the sport that it will introduce in the coming weeks.
Target isn't leaving the sports landscape; the company announced in January it would shift its focus to soccer.
"As we looked to evolve our sports marketing program, soccer provided Target with a unique opportunity to reach our guests in new places, and at all levels of the sport," Target said in a statement. "Through partnerships with Major League Soccer, Minnesota United FC, US Youth Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Foundation, Target has been able to create meaningful connections with players, fans and families, no matter how they participate in the sport."
RACER's Kelly Crandall and Marshall Pruett contributed to this report.

 

MILLER: Credit where it's due

Monday, 14 August 2017


Robin Miller / Images by LePage, Cantrell/LAT

A couple summers ago, Dario Franchitti and I were having lunch at the Workingman's Friend in Indianapolis when Kyle Larson strolled in and we invited him over to eat – after he got carded – the best cheeseburger in town.
About 15 minutes into the conversation Larson said he appreciated Dario and I constantly pushing Chip Ganassi to let him run the Indianapolis 500, but could we please back off for a while because the boss was getting a little testy about it. Then later on that season, Ganassi told me to leave the kid alone. "Let him win a few NASCAR races, and then maybe we'll discuss May someday," was the directive.
Well, fast-forward to this morning. Larson owns three wins in 2017 and sits second in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup standings. His magnificent move from fourth to first at Michigan got Ganassi so excited he nearly beat his engineers to death in jubilation. In his fourth year of Cup, the 25-year-old wunderkind is driving with the kind of confidence he displays at Eldora or Calistoga or the Chili Bowl, and it certainly appears like there's a correlation.
Which brings us back to the Chipster. He's seldom wrong (ask him), loves to argue and can be a tad bit oafish. But he did something really smart this season. He let Larson breathe in the fresh air of dirt racing between NASCAR dates. It's kept him sharp (seven wins and second place at the Knoxville Nationals last Saturday night) and those 25 dirt races have kept him happy. Now, maybe with every big Cup team circling free-agent Larson like piranhas for 2018, the longtime IndyCar/NASCAR owner decided his best negotiating tool was to let Kyle run free on dirt tracks across the country. If so, it was brilliant because other than his wife, son and parents, Larson's first love is The Cushion – running high and fast – and NASCAR is simply a nice way to supplement his income.
On top of that, it's made Larson easily one of the most popular drivers in the land. People pay to watch him run Williams Grove and then cheer for him on Sundays while watching television. With Target gone after 2017, finding a sponsor might be easier when you've got a personable young man winning fans and races everywhere.

"Kyle has got so much talent, and for all those people to be able go to their local dirt track and watch him kinda reminds me of our days," said Parnelli Jones, who Larson was compared to back in 2011 on WIND TUNNEL. "I think it's great he gets to do both and sprint cars keep him sharp."
Of course the flipside is that once Rufus, A.J., Mario, J.R. and the Unsers made it big in Indy cars, they either cut back or cut out all sprint car racing because of the dangers. Gary Bettenhausen was in his third year with Roger Penske but refused to stop running dirt cars and it cost him the use of his left arm and the best ride in IndyCar.
"It's a helluva risk, but it's what racing is all about," said Ganassi after announcing he was going to let Larson compete at Knoxville on Saturday night.
I'm not sure what changed Chip's mind, and I don't really care, it's just cool to see one of the brightest lights in American motorsports being allowed to race just about anything with four wheels. And that big one each May is right down Larson's gunsight.
"I don't know, we'll see, the Indy 500 is definitely on my bucket list," he replied after being asked the obvious question in Sunday's post-race press conference. "I don't know if it is right now at this moment, but for sure some day I'd like to, and Chip knows that."
Ganassi has been very perceptive. He hired the kid before anyone else identified his pedigree and now he's given Larson back the fun of racing. Two very smart moves, and Indy will be the third. Some day.