Race car drivers flipping wildly during the races is never a good sight for the spectators. Although the safety mechanisms in the modern era of motorsports have improved drastically, it isn’t enough to avoid crashes or flips. And, unfortunately, Kyle Larson’s 9-year-old son Owen had to experience just that while competing in a dirt racing event.

Larson’s wife Katelyn even shared the visuals of the nasty flip that Owen had to endure from her Instagram account. Although Owen didn’t sustain any injuries after the crash, the incident had her mom Katelyn worried.

Following in Kyle Larson’s footsteps, Owen got behind the wheels of a sprint car, as shown in the video shared by Katelyn. The 9-year-old was outside the top 5 places and therefore made attempts to get past his opponents on track, going wide. On the first attempt, the backstretch, his attempts were thwarted, but he wasn’t going to pull out that easily.

Coming on the front straightaway at the dirt oval track, Owen tried to merge with the pack racing on the inside lane. However, he missed his entry, and he made contact with the same car he bumped into on his first attempt. This time around, his winged sprint car took a nasty hit, and it saw Owen flipping in his race car upside down before coming to a rest on the front straightaway.

The race was quickly put under a red flag, and the safety crew quickly rushed to help the young driver. Fortunately, it was just a racing incident, and Owen was doing fine despite the severity of the impact after hitting the catch fence. His mom Katelyn had a heart-in-her-mouth moment after witnessing the crash: “Owen is fine, Mom is not,” she wrote on her Instagram stories.

With Owen Wilson coming out of the flip safe, the incident will be a big learning for the young racer. Following in the footsteps of the ‘wheel man’, young Owen Wilson looks to adopt his father’s skill at dirt tracks. And he has already shown some early flairs of talent.

Last year in May, Owen sealed his first career victory at the ‘Beginner Box Stock’ division in North Carolina’s Millbridge Speedway. He held off Konner Leicht to score the victory, and Kyle Larson was there, being the proud dad. “It’s super special. This is his first ever win, too. It’s really, really awesome,” Kyle Larson had said in the victory lane.

When asked how he got the lead, Owen replied, “I don’t really know. I just drove it.” Larson added, “I was nervous, and I’m kind of a softy, so I was getting teary-eyed with like seven to go. And then that last caution came out, and we had a restart with Brexton (Busch) behind him, and he started to switch it up. He didn’t catch them sleeping, but it confused them enough that it allowed him to get away.”

After the restart, Owen drove off to a 0.296-second lead to secure the victory. Leicht, Adalynn Owens, Busch, and Gabe Yacono completed the top five in the race. The young one proved his mettle again this year when he won his first-ever junior sprint race at Coles County Speedway on June 14.

In the 15-lap high-octane junior sprint race Owen, with his #81 sprint car, held off Levi Ballard to score the victory. Kyle Larson congratulated him with an Instagram post on June 15. “Little 0 got his first junior sprint win last night! so proud,” Kyle wrote.

Kyle Larson may have some advice for his young son after the latest mishap in the race, but at the moment, the focus of the Larson family would now shift to the all-important playoff race for the HMS star at Charlotte Roval.

Kyle Larson isn’t out of the woods yet

The driver of the #5 Chevy is in a good spot going into this weekend. He has a buffer of 52 points and also a good starting position, P6. But yesterday’s Xfinity Series playoff race should stand out as an example for the drivers that relying on points isn’t the best strategy to advance in the playoffs. Sheldon Creed and Riley Herbst were in a similar position going into the race, but all it took was a couple of crashes to derail their playoff journey.

Although Larson has a Roval win to his name from his championship-winning year, 2021, his last two starts in the Next Gen car haven’t been great. In the two starts he’s made at Roval in the new car, the best he’s managed is a P14 finish. This is indeed concerning if you are a Kyle Larson fan. Not to forget the element of the chaos added by NASCAR with the reconfiguration could alter Larson’s fate. Alongside, Kyle Busch is also taking note of the unpredictability of the Next Gen NASCAR era.

So the driver who entered the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs as the No. 1 seed, with four race wins, 10 stage wins, and a second-place finish in the regular season standings, is not at all content. “No, I don’t care about odds, really. Yeah, I don’t. I think like I said – NASCAR, especially in the Next Gen era, is just crazy. There’s so much inconsistency these days that you can easily find yourself in trouble. It doesn’t matter if you have a 35 or 40-point buffer to the cutline currently,” Larson stated via TobyChristie.com earlier in September. Well, stats do support his statements.

The 2024 season has already earned the moniker “Any Given Sunday” era of NASCAR. In the first 26 races, there were 15 different winners, some of whom were not even in consideration, ranking as low as 31st, 34th, and 18th in the standings.

So, despite being a favorite with the bookies with +380 odds to win the championship, Kyle Larson seems to have sensed the difficulty that could have come to his way. So just before the Atlanta and Watkins Glen races, he had rang the alarm. “Yeah, I don’t love seeing Atlanta (Motor Speedway) in the playoffs at all. And even Watkins Glen (International)… yes, I like those tracks, but they’re just sketchy places,” he had said. Right, he was.

Those two races proved to be disastrous for the top driver. At the Atlanta Motor Speedway, calamity struck top-seeded Kyle Larson and fellow playoff driver Chase Briscoe on the 56th circuit. As cars at the front of the field were exiting Turn 2 on Lap 56, Larson‘s No. 5 Chevrolet, running third shot into the outside wall at almost 160 mph.

The car rebounded off the SAFER barrier and slid sideways in the middle of the track. Meanwhile, Briscoe‘s Ford slammed into the Camaro, ripping the left front quarter panel off the No. 14 Mustang. Larson and Briscoe exited the race with 37 and 38th place, respectively. At the Watkins Glen Internation also, Larson managed only a decent 12th-place finish. Fortunately, he bounced back at the Bristol race, winning it. Meanwhile, this year is Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary season. So does that mean additional pressure?

“I don’t view it as pressure. I just view it as opportunity,” Kyle said. The good news for the #5 team is that they have a good starting position and should be able to keep their nose clean in the initial phases. But it won’t be a surprise if they decide to race for the stage points over victory. That has been a theme for the playoff drivers in 2024.