Kyle Larson is the hottest thing in NASCAR right now, but you don’t have to go back very far to find a driver who began a season even hotter.
As impressive as Kyle Larson has been to start the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series campaign, there’s a reason no one is calling it historic: it’s not. Kevin Harvick can verify that.
Had Larson held on to win the 2017 Daytona 500 instead of running out of gas, that might be a different story. But his run of four consecutive second or better finished, which he capped off with his second career victory at California, doesn’t quite measure up to what Harvick did in 2015.
Two years ago, Harvick finished second at both Daytona and Atlanta, then won Las Vegas and Phoenix before “settling” for second at California. Five races, all second place or better, two wins.
Just for good measure, Harvick ended up adding five more second-place finishes in the next nine races after that, along with three other top-10 finishes (his only misfortune was finishing 38th in the Bristol spring race). You may recall that Harvick cooled down only slightly that summer, where he finished in the top 10 in all but one race between Sonoma and Darlington.
Alas, in the Chase/playoff era, that kind of early season success isn’t a guarantee of winning a championship. Harvick was around until the very end, but he ultimately fell one place and one point short of Kyle Busch — a driver, who was injured and wasn’t even racing when Harvick was setting the NASCAR world on fire from February through early April.
What does all this mean to Larson? Simply this: it’s great to see him take the next step and contend at all kinds of tracks. The Chip Ganassi Chevys have been fast every week so far, and there’s nothing to suggest they are going away. Larson is also as good as guaranteed to make the playoffs, so he should get a chance to run for the title.
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But the way NASCAR seasons are structured right now, dominating for a month at a time means a lot more in October than it does in March. As Harvick would surely tell him, it’s great to rack up points and go for wins at the beginning of the season, but a string of second or better runs ending in Homestead leads to much bigger and better things.