“Hendrick Stuff Was Superior” – Kyle Larson on the Differences Between His Legendary Success in 2021 and His Sharp Fall From the Top in 2022

Heading into the 2022 season, a majority of folks inside and outside the NASCAR community were confident that Kyle Larson will defend his Cup championship and win his second back-to-back. And why wouldn’t they have been? He’d just wrapped up a season for the history books with 10 wins!

But of course, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Larson struggled a lot.

As for why that happened, the Hendrick Motorsports driver had some reasons, some justifications, and some opinions on why the stencil of success he made in 2021 didn’t help with the picture of his 2022.

Kyle Larson on the factors that differentiated his 2022 from 2021

Speaking to Corey LaJoie in a recent episode of the Stacking Pennies podcast, Larson answered a question that had asked him about why last season didn’t turn out to be the way the season before it did for him.

“I think in 2021, Hendrick stuff was superior to everybody and that makes your job a lot easier,” Larson said. “Everybody was really confident.”

But with the onset of Next Gen car in 2022, Larson claimed the field got “a lot tighter”, and even the little mistakes “just magnified” for whatever reason.

MARTINSVILLE, VA – OCTOBER 29: Kyle Larson (#5 Hendrick Motorsports HendrickCars.com Chevrolet) talks with members of his crew during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Xfinity 500 on October 29, 2022 at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, VA. (Photo by Jeff Robinson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)“It was just a tough year for everybody, I feel like nobody got on a roll. I mean, Chase (Elliott) for a little bit there during the summer, but everybody was up and down,” he continued.

“Now that you have a year under your belt, you can see where the style of racing is different, try to adjust, and hopefully do a good job this year.”

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Did Larson get lazy after his success in 2021?

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After describing what changed for him between 2021 and 2022, Kyle Larson was asked if his follow-up to immense success from his Cup championship year impacted his disappointment in the year after that.

“I don’t know, stats wise it was down compared to other years for me but like I said, it still was a good year,” he replied. “I don’t know, maybe your mindset, at times like, ‘Oh, I’ve already won a Cup championship’, like maybe you don’t push quite hard to continue to get better, maybe you get lazy a little bit at different times of the year.”

This, for Larson, is “the only thing” which was different between the last two seasons, “It’s just like, you’ve reached your goal, so it’s hard to continue to push,” he claimed, but now that he has tasted disappointment, he feels he’s ready to push for success with renewed motivation once again, “Then you have a year where you don’t win it again, it’s like, ‘Alright, I want to get back’, so you work hard again.”

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