The leader of wins in the 2024 Cup Series season achieved his feats without much noise. Kyle Larson currently owns 6 race victories, double the stats held by Cup rivals closest to his heels. Despite numerous instances of on-track scuffles in Cup this year – from the Stenhouse-Busch fistfight to Hocevar spinning Burton – you would not find Kyle Larson on that list. And that is what earned him the respect of a veteran who used to be NASCAR’s Ironman.

Ricky Rudd, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, was a golden phenomenon in his time. The 23-time Cup Series winner was known for his tremendous grit and iron capacity to continue driving even amidst extreme health risks. So recognition from this former HMS driver is no mean feat – but we are talking about Kyle Larson the overachiever.

Kyle Larson’s calm demeanor enthralls rowdy veteran

Making his Cup debut in 1975 at Rockingham Speedway, 18-year-old Ricky Rudd soon developed his signature style of racing. Among his competitors, Rudd earned a name for being a formidable racer. Although he was a clean racer, he taught rivals who messed with him a lesson, as they fell on the wrong side of his bumper. The scrappy driver, the 1997 Brickyard 400 winner, received a fitting nickname for his on-track personality – “Rooster.” His rowdiness was experienced firsthand by veterans like Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, and Dale Earnhardt.

But even the “Rooster” tipped his hat to Kyle Larson’s indomitable calmness of spirit. In a recent interview, the NASCAR Hall of Famer detailed his mindset when he went to race. He did not snuggle with his rivals so much: “You gotta dig down deep when you kind of go out against the competition. Especially when these guys are the best, you know, the best there is…These guys on the racetrack, they were my enemy. I didn’t treat them unkindly, but those were the guys that I purposely wasn’t super close friends with any of them…We were, you know, friends, but just more acquaintances than it was friendship.”

Yet Rudd chose to salute Kyle Larson‘s starkly opposite attitude on the racetrack. The Charlotte Roval race winner rarely harbors ill will towards his rivals, and that is what sets his unique driving style, as Rudd said. “I don’t think everybody’s programmed that way. Some guys win and they find a different way to do it. You look at Kyle Larson today. I don’t think he gets mad at anybody, you know. I don’t think he could get mad. But he wins. He’s a heck of a driver and he wins races. Everybody’s got their own way of competing and doing what you have to do to be competitive.” Larson tied Rudd on the wins list when he clinched his 23rd career win last year in Las Vegas.

Kyle Larson went way up and beyond that stat, as he currently stands with 29 Cup wins. However, Ricky Rudd’s feisty spirit makes jaws drop even today.

Rudd had a steel will

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Safety procedures are more elaborate in today’s NASCAR, with SAFER barriers and the Next-Gen car. However, when these precautions were scarce at the latter end of the 20th century, drivers usually risked their lives. But Ricky Rudd braved many instances of severe injuries inside his race car. For instance, he had a horrifying rollover crash in the 1984 Busch Light Clash. However, Rudd still chose to drive the Daytona 500 a week later with swollen eyelids held together with duct tape. Then, in a 1998 Martinsville race, a malfunctioning cool suit left him with second-degree and third-degree burns on his back and bottom. He went on to win the race, giving interviews on his back as medics stuffed his suit with ice packs.

Despite these numerous injuries and ailments, Rudd thought nothing of it. He looked up to his heroes like AJ Foyt, Richard Petty, and the Allisons and opined they would do the same thing. “Those were the guys that I looked at as being tough. I did some things that maybe some guys wouldn’t do getting back in the car when you’re pretty injured…didn’t feel that I did anything any differently than the group in front of me, those guys a generation in front of me. I just tried to emulate what they did and didn’t know any different.” He was selected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2025, along with Carl Edwards and Ralph Moody.

Evidently, Kyle Larson’s new fan is a legend in NASCAR himself. With the 2024 season largely slanting in Larson’s direction, let us see if Larson still has wins waiting for him.