- Verstappen earns praise from Larson, who claimed to be the better driver.
- Larson admits his comparison was misread, clarifying he never meant F1.
- NASCAR champion now wants the debate to lift American motorsport.
Kyle Larson once drew a firm line in the sand. Now, he is rubbing part of it away. The NASCAR Cup Series champion, speaking on the SPEED with Harvick and Buxton YouTube channel, offered a far warmer view of Max Verstappen than he did less than a year ago.
Where he once said he was the better all-around driver, he now calls what the Dutchman does “amazing.”
How a blunt claim started a global argument
It was August 2024 when Larson first spoke on the matter. In an interview with FloRacing, he said plainly that he believed he was a better all-around driver than the four-time Formula 1 world champion.
His reasoning was grounded in range. Verstappen, Larson argued, could not step into a Sprint Car and win the Knoxville Nationals. He could not win the Chili Bowl. He could not pull off a win on the dirt at Bristol.
Larson was not claiming to be a faster Formula 1 driver. He openly acknowledged Verstappen would hold the advantage there.
But he argued that one discipline is only one discipline, and that he believed he had the edge everywhere else.
The reaction was immediate and loud. Formula 1 fans pushed back hard. The debate spread well beyond American borders. Verstappen handled the moment with ease. He smiled and simply said:
“That’s fine. Everyone thinks their own way, right?”
He added, diplomatically, that he would likely need time to practice before racing on dirt, but that good drivers tend to learn quickly.
The deeper frustration behind the comparison
Larson’s original claim was about more than one driver against another. It carried a long-held frustration about how American motorsport is viewed overseas.
He has said clearly that he believes Americans do not receive the respect they deserve from European audiences in sports generally, and that racing is no different.
Larson understands that Formula 1 is the world’s most-watched motorsport. He understands that its fans are devoted to it. But he believes that devotion can create a blind spot, one that dismisses every driver outside of F1 as somehow lesser.
For Larson, this dismissal ignores what American racing actually demands. He has competed across sprint cars, dirt late models and the NASCAR Cup Series, winning the 2021 and 2025 Cup Series titles along the way.
That breadth of experience, he believes, builds something that a single-discipline career does not.
“Hopefully, we’ll get to the point where NASCAR and American auto racing gets that respect that it deserves,” Larson said, via GPBlog.
“Because there’s so much different, diverse racing in America, compared to Europe, that in my mind, it would have to develop a driver that’s just as good or potentially better than any other part of the world.”
A shift in tone, if not in belief
On his recent SPEED with Harvick and Buxton appearance, Larson sounded like a man who had sat with the debate long enough to see its edges differently.
He admitted that his original comment may have been misread. Many fans took it to mean he believed he was a better Formula 1 driver than Verstappen.
That, he said, was not what he meant. He added that he would likely never race in F1, and that if he ever did, he would not be close to Verstappen’s level.
Asked directly who the better racer is, Larson stepped back from any firm answer. He said he does not know how anyone would settle that question, or whether it even needs to be settled.
He reframed the debate itself as something worth enjoying, a conversation between American fans, European fans and open-wheel fans rather than a verdict waiting to be delivered.
Then came the most surprising part of the interview. Larson spoke about Verstappen with genuine admiration.
“He’s extremely good. He gets the praise from so many people,” Larson said. “You have to accept that, yes, he probably is the best for how much they brag about him. Competitors, team executives, all that. So yeah, what he does is amazing.”
He also pointed to the gap between Verstappen and his teammates as the clearest evidence of his greatness.
“His teammate is never even on the same stratosphere as him,” Larson added, “where all the other teams are within a couple positions.”
What changed, and what did not
Larson’s updated view is not a retreat. His original point, that versatility across disciplines sets a driver apart, still holds in his mind. What has changed is the framing.
At the time of his 2024 comments, Verstappen had won seven races that season and led the F1 standings comfortably.
Larson himself had four wins in NASCAR and had accumulated 17 Cup wins since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
The cross-discipline debate has always been slippery. Former F1 world champions Jenson Button and Kimi Räikkönen both tried NASCAR events and found them harder than expected.
That experience lends weight to Larson’s underlying argument: that these disciplines are genuinely, meaningfully different, and that switching between them is not as simple as changing a car.
Larson’s invitation for Verstappen to try Cup racing still stands. But it comes now from curiosity, not confrontation.
The man who once said “you can quote that” about being better than Verstappen now cares less about winning the argument than about having it heard.
That, in its own way, says something.
