Kyle Larson Finally Sees Signs of a Turnaround Before NASCAR’s Chase

Kyle Larson hasn’t had many NASCAR Cup Series Sundays lately that felt quite like New Hampshire.

Not because he won. He didn’t.

But for a driver who has spent much of the summer searching for the speed and results normally expected from the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team, Sunday’s constantly changing race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway gave Larson something he hasn’t had enough of lately: tangible progress.

He won the opening stage, spent much of the afternoon near the front and eventually brought his Chevrolet home fifth.

And with only one race remaining before NASCAR’s Chase begins, the timing couldn’t be much better.

“Hopefully we can just continue to build on it,” Larson said after the race. “Still have a lot of growth still left to get to where we’re leading laps consistently and challenging for wins. It’s good now these last two weeks to have a solid finish, just got to continue to work hard. We’ve been doing that for the past two years it seems, and eventually I think it will come around. If you can’t win them, then just try to be consistent.”

For Larson, consistency is beginning to matter a little more.

Sunday didn’t begin like a normal afternoon at New Hampshire.

Rain had soaked the 1.058-mile track, and NASCAR ultimately started the field on wet-weather tires. The surface gradually dried, eventually allowing teams to switch to slicks and turning the opening portion of the race into a moving target for drivers.

Larson loved it.

“It was a lot of fun,” Larson said. “We knew [the track] was going to go through changes. While we were in the wet, you just try to manage your tire temps as it was drying. It was important. Once we went to the slicks, you’re trying to look for the patches of dry. I thought myself and Bell did the best job of that.”

That adaptability showed on the scoreboard.

Larson led 14 of the opening 70 laps and won Stage 1 ahead of Christopher Bell, Carson Hocevar, William Byron and Josh Berry.

The conditions eventually stabilized, and so did the race.

“It was good to get the stage win there,” Larson said. “From then on, it was just normal Loudon. I was pretty free. We made some good adjustments on it, but still, obviously need to be a little bit better. But a really good Loudon for us.”

There is an important distinction in that assessment.

Larson wasn’t pretending the No. 5 team suddenly had everything figured out. Once the unusual conditions disappeared and New Hampshire became a more conventional race, he still saw areas where Hendrick needed to improve.

But he also left with a stage win and another top-five finish. Considering how his summer has unfolded, that’s meaningful.

A fifth-place finish would ordinarily hardly qualify as a breakthrough for Larson. His standards are considerably higher.

Yet Larson hasn’t won a Cup race since May 2025, an unusually long drought for a driver who had recorded at least three victories in every season since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.

That doesn’t mean he has disappeared from contention.

Larson’s fifth-place run at New Hampshire was his ninth top-five finish of the season, and it moved him up one position to seventh in the Cup Series standings.

More importantly, the No. 5 team is beginning to string together better afternoons at exactly the point in the calendar when that becomes increasingly important.

Only Daytona remains before the 16-driver Chase field turns its attention toward Darlington Raceway and the championship fight.

Larson knows a pair of encouraging finishes doesn’t suddenly erase everything his team has been chasing. His own comments made that clear. He wants to lead more laps. He wants to consistently challenge for victories. And he knows the No. 5 isn’t quite there yet.

But NASCAR’s postseason rarely rewards teams for what they were doing months earlier. It rewards the teams that find their best form when it matters most.

Larson hasn’t reached that point yet. New Hampshire offered another indication that he might finally be getting closer.