After a long time away from NASCAR, Kyle Larson feels just right when he steps into his No. 5 Henrick Motorsports car.
Larson was suspended from NASCAR last April for having used a racial slur in an iRacing event. He was restored before the beginning of the 2021 Cup Series season and Hendrick Motorsports signed him for the No. 5 car.
The former Chip Ganassi Racing driver is three races into his comeback career in NASCAR. Having been away from the sport for so long, Larson didn’t feel as much difficulty as he had expected before going into the races with his new team.
“I thought there would be cobwebs and rust. But maybe because I raced so much last year in sprint cars and open-wheel cars and dabbled in some Late Model stuff, I felt as fresh as ever in a race car,” said Larson. “Your body just gets into a rhythm of even buckling in the car each week. When I got in the car and put my head and neck restraint on and buckling up and all that, everything just felt normal. It didn’t feel like I had been out of the car in a long time.”
Larson has had a decent start in his comeback career with NASCAR. In the three races so far, he has registered two top-10 finishes, the best of which was a fourth-placed at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The No. 5 driver further added the ease with which he has taken himself back into NASCAR.
“Even shifting gears and coming down pit road and stopping on my pit sign and stuff like that, like it’s all come natural so far. I don’t really feel like I’ve made any mistakes doing those little things.”
While Larson might not have had the best of starts as he would have liked, there are a lot of races to be played and Larson will get better chances to claim his first win with HMS.
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