Heated Chili Bowl Beef & Wife’s Pregnancy Forced Kyle Larson to Break 15-Year-Old Streak to Make Shock Debut

Kyle Larson has frequently participated in racing series outside of the NASCAR Cup Series. One of those is the Chili Bowl Nationals, a week-long midget car race event that takes place in January. Larson has been competing in the event for 15 years, but it seems he will have to break his 15-year-long streak at the Chili Bowl.

Since he wouldn’t be competing in the Chili Bowl, he has found a home in New Mexico. In a recent interview with Floracing, the 2021 Cup Series Champion revealed that he plans on competing in the 2023 Wild West Shootout.

Talking about Wild West Shootout, the Hendrick Motorsports driver said, “I’ve followed along with it the last handful of years. I’ve ran in the chili ball now for 15 years, and kind of just got to the point where I want to try something different and it just happens to be on the same week.” 

It seems like he needed some change from the Chili Bowl, as he explained, “I was regardless, probably knocking on the Chili Bowl. And I was just trying to figure out, well, ‘do we go on a family vacation? Do I go racing?’ And, you know, our baby’s due any day now, and figure we couldn’t go on a family vacation. So might as might as well go race. So, excited about it. Thanks to Kevin Rumley for making the long toe out to New Mexico.'”  

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Chili Bowl isn’t a big enough deal to Kyle Larson

Did racing in the Chili Bowl for 15 years made Larson want to try something different? It seems that there could be more to this. Larson and his teammate had beef with the series earlier this year, which could have been a reason for him not competing there.

However, talking to Racing America, he explained, “I’ve spent half of my life going there. But now that I’ve started racing in these other big events, against big names, and they just feel like a bigger deal to me than the Chili Bowl.”

He did have an issue with the purse of the race. But of course, it didn’t sit well with the founder of the sprint car series as he said, “They have my number. Chase Elliott has my number. I’m really easy to get a hold of, and I would have this conversation with them too but they’ve all gone straight to the media.”

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Do you think what Larson said was fair? Or should he have silently taken his leave from the series? Let us know in the comments.