Kyle Larson has spent plenty of time celebrating in Victory Lane this year. Just not in the NASCAR Cup Series.
The defending Cup Series champion has continued piling up victories away from NASCAR, including six wins in the High Limit Racing series he co-owns. But inside the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, one of NASCAR’s most prolific winners has suddenly found victories remarkably difficult to come by.
Larson enters Saturday night’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway riding a 47-race Cup Series winless streak, dating back to his victory at Kansas Speedway in May 2025.
And lately, the problem has become much bigger than simply not winning.
A crash at Iowa Speedway last weekend left Larson with his fourth finish of 33rd or worse in five races. He qualified 30th at Richmond, his worst starting position of the season.
For a driver who collected 26 victories over his first five seasons with Hendrick Motorsports, it is a startling stretch.
Larson isn’t pretending otherwise.
“I guess it’s probably a funny balance because yeah, I get to go have that thrill and enjoyment of winning on the sprint car stuff, and I think (the crew) get a sense of that themselves just being a part of me, but yeah, I mean we would all love to have some success on the NASCAR side of things,” Larson said Friday at Richmond. “We’ve just had a rough go here lately, but yeah, you’ve got to just take small victories from each weekend.”
Kyle Larson’s 47-Race Winless Streak Tells Only Part of the Story
Larson’s struggles are particularly striking because of the standard he established after joining Hendrick Motorsports.
He won 10 Cup races during his championship season in 2021 and accumulated 26 victories over his first five years driving the No. 5 Chevrolet. That made him one of the defining drivers of NASCAR’s current era.
Now he hasn’t won in nearly 50 starts.
His recent results have made the drought even more pronounced. Larson’s Iowa crash marked the fourth time in five races that he finished 33rd or worse, and his 30th-place starting position at Richmond gives him another obstacle to overcome Saturday night.
Yet Larson doesn’t believe the No. 5 team’s current form means its championship hopes should be written off.
“I mean, just really to just get some solid runs in again, get that momentum built back up in these next few,” Larson said when discussing what he needs down the stretch.
Then came the part that should command everyone’s attention.
“I think we all are not naive enough to think that we could be as good or better than Toyotas in the next three weeks, but we weren’t as good as them last year, and we won the championship and would have won it in this format. So we could still do it.”
That’s the distinction Larson is making. Hendrick doesn’t necessarily need to become NASCAR’s dominant organization overnight. It needs to find enough speed and consistency to put itself in position when the Chase begins.
Hendrick Motorsports Is Searching for Answers
Larson isn’t alone.
Hendrick Motorsports has won only twice this season, with both victories belonging to Chase Elliott. William Byron remains winless, while Alex Bowman has endured an injury-shortened campaign.
Elliott pushed back Friday on the idea that Larson should shoulder the scrutiny by himself.
“I mean, I don’t think he’s alone in a lot of that,” Elliott said. “It’s not like we’ve been lighting the world on fire either, you know what I mean? I don’t think it’s fair to single him out on that. We’ve all been working really hard to be better.”
The standings reinforce that point.
Five Toyota drivers currently occupy spots inside the top six, with Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney the lone exception. Hendrick, an organization accustomed to setting the standard in the Cup garage, is instead trying to close the gap with the Chase approaching.
Larson nevertheless has a compelling reason to believe the situation can change quickly: He has already lived through it.
“I might not seem confident; none of us might seem confident as far as winning a championship, but there is still that confidence in there because you race for Hendrick Motorsports, and at any point we can turn it around,” Larson said. “So just got to be ready for whenever that day comes.”
For Larson, Richmond would be a pretty good place to start. He’ll just have to come from 30th to do it.