CONCORD, N.C. – Kyle Larson’s prowess on dirt is well known. He is a two-time winner of the Chili Bowl Nationals and has won prestigious dirt races in the Kings Royal, the Prairie Dirt Classic and the Knoxville Nationals. In addition, the 30-year-old has 26 feature wins in the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. He also won on the dirt at Eldora Speedway in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series in 2016.
With his win at Richmond Raceway on Sunday, he is also the most recent winner in the NASCAR Cup Series heading into the dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway. However, the 2021 premier series champion is quick to say he shouldn’t be considered the favorite.
PHOTOS: See all of Kyle Larson's wins at Hendrick Motorsports
"I could have ran last in every single race leading into Bristol and the media is probably going to point to me as being the favorite anyway at Bristol just because it’s a dirt track," Larson joked after his win last weekend at the .75-mile track in Virginia’s capital city. "I know that we’re going to be good at every racetrack, so that’s promising.
"… It is so different than the dirt racing that I do during the week. These heavy stock cars drive nothing like even a dirt late model that’s 2,400 pounds. I maybe can read a (dirt) track better than (most) people, but now this is our third year on it, so I think everybody has kind of got a good idea of what to look for."
In last year’s race, Larson led the way for Hendrick Motorsports. He won the opening stage and finished fourth. The organization saw three cars finish in the top 10 – Alex Bowman placed sixth and Chase Elliott was eighth – which makes them the only team to do that on the Bristol dirt.
"I thought the racing was good," Larson said of the 2022 Bristol dirt race. "You could run different lanes. You could run the bottom at times, the middle and the top. You could move forward but it was tough to pass once you got towards the front. It was as good as it could get."
In the two years that the dirt race has been run at the .533-mile track in Tennessee, 16 different drivers have earned top-10 finishes, including all four of Hendrick Motorsports’ full-time drivers. In fact, Elliott (who will be sidelined for this race as he continues to recover from a fractured tibia) is one of four drivers to finish in the top 10 in both editions of this race.
That sort of parity can lead to a shakeup of who is at the front of the field. That is not lost on the only multi-time winner in the Cup Series this season, William Byron. The 25-year-old driver has one top-10 finish in this event - a sixth-place run in 2021. His only other NASCAR start on dirt came at Eldora in 2016, where he finished 14th.
"The Bristol dirt race is one of those wild card races," Byron said. "It’s such a challenge. It is one of those wild card races because of the dirt and the fact that a lot of us didn’t grow up doing that."
Byron have additional seat time on the dirt this weekend as he will be making his first of three Truck Series starts for Kyle Busch Motorsports. He will drive the No. 51 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Silverado on Saturday night for the team that he drove for in his seven-win campaign in the Truck ranks in 2016.
"I think those extra laps will help me for Sunday," Byron told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week. "I am just looking forward to three days of it and hopefully I have it figured out by Sunday."
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Larson will also be busy this week as he is hosting the Kyle Larson Late Model Challenge at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tennessee, on Thursday night. This is the second year of the event at the third-mile oval and several Cup Series drivers are slated to participate. He won a Late Model race on dirt Jan. 27 at Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Georgia.
Tune in to watch the Bristol dirt race on Sunday, April 9, at 7 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).