Kyle Larson returns to Kansas seeking to end drought: ‘We want to win’

Kyle Larson is returning to a familiar track in a very unfamiliar position.

Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team have spent the last two spring races at Kansas Speedway celebrating in Victory Lane. His visit in May 2025 was his last trip to any Victory Lane in NASCAR.

Advertisement

They return to the 1.5-mile track this weekend at the crossroads of a juxtaposition: They’re the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champions and the race’s defending winner. But Larson hasn’t won a Cup Series race since May 2025, nearly one year ago at this very track.

MORE: Kansas schedule | Cup standings

The winless streak has extended to 32 races, by most measures a totally normal span of time to go without winning if your name isn’t Kyle Larson. But Larson is Larson, and he’s never gone this long without winning at Hendrick Motorsports.

“It’s kind of wild to think that, yeah, it’s almost been a year since I’ve won,” Larson said in a recent teleconference. “I don’t feel like we’re that bad. I think ultimately celebrating the championship in Phoenix felt like a win in a lot of ways. But yeah, ultimately, I mean, we want to get back to Victory Lane. We’re working as hard as we ever have worked, I feel like, as a group. We want to win. It’s just gotten really tough for whatever reason. Got some good tracks coming up for us, and hopefully we can do a good job and execute.

Advertisement

“But, yeah, this series is tough. I know a lot of times we’ve made winning maybe look easy, but it’s not, and I’ve never felt that it was easy.”

Winning with ease was a staple of Larson’s first year with Hendrick Motorsports. That 2021 season produced a staggering 10 wins, an All-Star Race victory and a championship right off the bat. His win count dwindled to three in 2022, the first year of the Next Gen car, a successful season yet one that left the team — especially crew chief Cliff Daniels — frustrated at times.

“Maybe our expectations and our bar got set too high in 2021, and then in 2022, that was as crazy as Cliff ‘s ever been,” Larson said. “He was really, really intense that year. Drove himself crazy by the middle of the playoffs. We won like three races or something that year, and now we’ve gone a lot longer without a win, but I feel like the way he handles himself and the way that he handles others working with him […] I feel like he’s handled all of it really well. His leadership qualities have always been great, but he’s continued to evolve them into a good place where he still has a lot of that intensity, but in the right way.

“He’s the most competitive person I know, so I’m sure it’s killing him that we haven’t won in almost a year now. But I feel like he’s doing a good job of harnessing his emotions and keeping us all focused.”

Advertisement

If 2022 was a learning year, 2025 was a graduate-level course. The team experienced grief in multiple ways, most publicly with the death of public relations representative Jon Edwards and privately as crew members battled personal losses behind the scenes, all while a new pit crew joined the fold. Daniels held the team together, instilling book clubs in which the No. 5 group read three books together through the 2025 season. That perseverance and unity combined to win them a championship in November.

“When you get the opportunity to have new teammates, fresh perspective, it does push us to evolve in ways, and to continue to push ourselves to get better,” Daniels said in an October 2025 availability. “That, I think, is great. I sometimes get rigid in our structure and our process of knowing that it’s been built for a reason, and it’s been successful. And now more than ever, after seeing the way this (2025) year has played out for us, I don’t want to be quite so rigid in things that we do, and be able to take in fresh perspective and new ways to just improve, be more efficient, even mix it up with team dynamics and fun things that we do, all the way down to the gritty details of how we execute and build a race car.”

The lessons from 2025 are already resonating in the spring blossom of 2026, particularly in how Daniels has led the team toward stability despite a goose egg in the win column.

Advertisement

“Last year was a really tough year for our team personally and professionally with different members of our team passing away or team members having family members pass away,” Larson said. “A fresh pit crew came in. Like, there were so many things last year that could have derailed us. But I think Cliff’s leadership kept us on the right track. You’re doing different things, like the book studies and different team gatherings and events. I think [that] was all really important stuff to kind of lay the foundation with a relatively new group of men and women on our team.

“I would say that’s kind of carried over into this year, and I think probably helps keep us more motivated than maybe we could have been had we not done all those things. So I feel like, although we haven’t gotten the wins, I feel like we’re still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, team out there, and that’s just due to the leadership.”

Larson’s mindset is notably different than perhaps any other time in his Hendrick tenure. Wins at one point seemed nearly automatic. Now, he’s just hoping for a chance.

“We would love to just get back to leading bunch of laps and top threes in stages and top threes in the race,” Larson said before last week’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway. “Ultimately, we’d love to get a win to break the streak, I guess. But more than anything, I just want to have good runs where I feel like I can contend for a win.”

Advertisement

That wish came true at Bristol, where Larson was back to form like he hadn’t missed a beat, leading 284 laps and finishing third. That makes sense, particularly when you consider he led 411 laps in that race one year ago and went to Victory Lane. The two-time champion feels like he needs a tinge more to break the streak, but Bristol brewed progress.

“We had moments where I thought we were a definite contender …,” Larson said. “We executed great today. I thought our pit crew did an awesome job. Felt like really fast stops from inside the car, and then the restart execution was good. I thought the way I executed through lapped traffic was good with a loose race car. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, it could have been worse. We made the most out of the day.”

The stats are far from concerning as Larson looks to get back to Victory Lane. In eight starts this year, Larson has two top fives and five top 10s, with laps led in three of the last four races. The numbers across his 32 races since a victory, provided by Racing Insights, offer a cross-section of competitive runs that feature the No. 5 Chevrolet in the mix:

But Larson and the rest of the Chevrolet drivers are navigating a new Chevrolet body — one that has just one win in eight races this year, thanks to Chase Elliott at Martinsville Speedway. The notebook is growing, but finding success is taking time, patience and perspective.

Advertisement

“I feel like our window of performance is just really narrow currently,” Larson said on NASCAR Inside the Race. “I feel like my balance just kind of goes back and forth each run. So maybe that’s the new body. Maybe that’s something else. Maybe that’s me. I’m not really sure. But we’re trying to figure it out, and that’s what’s cool about Hendrick Motorsports is we work really hard. It was good to see Chase get that win because it shows that Chevy’s capable of winning. But I still think we’re a little bit of work away from being exactly where we want to be each and every week.”

Perhaps Kansas can deliver what Larson needs on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, FOX, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Larson has won three times at Kansas since joining Hendrick, and no one has led more laps here than his 761 laps out front in the No. 5 car. Plus, it’s nearly become a spring tradition for him to taste the Kansas City barbecue awaiting the winner in Victory Lane.

Until then, Larson and the No. 5 team will journey forward, seeking an end to their longest winless drought since Larson’s Hendrick arrival.