Kyle Larson is pulling another Double Duty this weekend! On Sunday, the Hendrick Motorsports star will battle for his fifth race win of the 2024 Cup Series season at Richmond Raceway. But on Saturday, he will start from pole in the #57 Paul Silva Racing Sprint car gunning for what could be Larson’s 3rd Knoxville Nationals title in only his fourth appearance at the annual 410 feature.

His demeanor before qualifying would hardly signal his $12,000-worth preliminary fortunes to come on Thursday. While speaking to Matt Weaver, the man ended up underestimating his advances before the night got progressively better for him on a surface he wasn’t too confident to be racing on initially. And by the looks of things at the present moment, the defending champ has marked himself as the man to beat yet again, for a $190,000 cash prize in the grand finale, yet again.

From nervous to victorious: Kyle Larson takes pole at 63rd Knoxville Nationals

For an elite sports celebrity, Kyle Larson has never been one to bang his own drum too conspicuously. If he wins the 2024 Knoxville Nationals, it will be his 12th win at the 0.5-mile racetrack. A lifelong open-wheel racer, he started racing karts at seven. For example, his experience, when he swept all 50 laps to win the mains last year, he became just the eighth multi-time winner of an event that attracts almost 100 hopefuls annually. It took him only four years to achieve that feat and Larson does not even normally compete in open-wheel racing. Although he owns and is actively involved with High Limit Racing, a Sprint Car Series that he owns with his brother-in-law, Brad Sweet.

The point is, despite an impressive track record at Knoxville, coupled with his overall affinity to the discipline, Larson remains commendably grounded. For example, after drawing number one to lead the rest in qualifying, Kyle Larson told Matt Weaver how “nervous” he was because of his qualifying misfortunes earlier in the year. Just for notice, he has won four Sprint Car races this past week itself.

Regardless, he was a little too humble when he said, “I mean being one of the last 5 or 6 cars to go out so. Yeah, I don’t even know what part of the race track to run on so… I mean obviously we don’t qualify good. So we need all the help we can get… I still don’t expect to be quick time but hope to be top-10 and you know, start our week off okay.” When Weaver asked him if he could “tell by looking at the track, what sort of track it’s going to be,” Larson simply replied, “No, I can’t tell because I wasn’t able to look at it yesterday, right now. But you’ll get a good idea after how laps pan out…“ 

A few moments later, Kyle Larson ended up posting the third fastest time in qualifying at 15.954 seconds behind Tyler Courtney and Daryn Pittman’s quick time of 15.594 seconds. Yet, after the 25-lap A-main feature ended with Larson taking the cake over 23 other drivers on Thursday evening, 86-time World of Outlaws winner Pittman who finished sixth, would find his place alongside Larson on the front row. Behind them, 14 other competitors are now locked in for the 2024 Knoxville Nationals title. Tyler Courtney, Carson Macedo, and the winner of Wednesday’s main event, Giovanni Scelzi, will round off the top-5 in that respective order for that bunch.

Although Pittman was incredible throughout the day, even winning Heat-1 and matching Kyle Larson in the points tally at 490 points, he fell short of optimum track position because of a hard-charging Larson who took advantage of his High Limit Racing employee/colleague Rico Abreu’s misfortunes on the final lap. And as expected, after winning Toyota qualifying night 2, the man of the moment was a little too humble once again.

A ‘High Limit’ moment on the last lap with Rico Abreu

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Larson started his race in 6th position and led no laps until the very last one where he overtook Abreu after a lapped car slid up right in front of the 2014 USAC National Midget Series champion. Larson acknowledged these troubles for Abreu in his post-race interview with FloRacing in Victory Lane, “Rico was doing a good job as the leader… Carson got rolling there for a minute, and I didn’t think I was going to get by him. I didn’t really know exactly what to do. Rico got to a lapper. He couldn’t follow him and had to go top or middle. That car hit the berm in front of me. That gave me a bunch of clean air and probably messed him up…”

Regardless, he was also mindful of his own progress, as he noted, “We were in the right place at the right time, but you always have to execute every lap… The car felt great during the feature.” Continuing his dialogue with the reporter to answer more questions, Larson thanked nearly everyone involved in making the event come to fruition. From HendrickCars.com to FloRacing themselves, a closer look at his triumphant post-race address of gratitude will only strengthen his humbly dominant character further in front of his toughest of critics.

It has been quite a wholesome experience to witness the immense celebrations of the 63rd annual Knoxville Nationals, coupled with Kyle Larson’s unnecessarily down-to-earth character taking center stage. But with history-making performances like his, the man wouldn’t be too obnoxious in giving himself some public credit once in a while. That said, could his nonchalance bear heavily on his hopes for a third Knoxville championship come Saturday?