- Larson has officially gone one full calendar year without a Sunday Cup Series victory.
- Slump mirrors dip for Hendrick Motorsports, which saw four cars finish outside top 20.
- Larson remains unbothered by the streak, citing an ongoing search for consistency.
Usually, in NASCAR, a season flies by in no time. New winners emerge, storylines shift, and so does the title fight as teams rise and fall.
But somehow, one statistic still feels out of place whenever it’s mentioned. This past Monday marked a full calendar year since reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson last visited Victory Lane on a Sunday.
While for most drivers, a 36-race winless streak wouldn’t sound stark, for the No. 5 ace, it almost sounds fictional. In fact, since his crushing performance at Kansas Speedway in May 2025, Larson has repeatedly found himself close, but never quite close enough for a win.
Kansas feels like a lifetime ago for Kyle Larson
Larson’s last Cup Series victory came at Kansas Speedway on May 11, 2025, and it was vintage Larson from start to finish. The Hendrick Motorsports driver controlled the race with the kind of authority that once felt normal for the No. 5 team. He sliced through traffic effortlessly, reminding the garage why he had become one of the sport’s most efficient/daring superstars.
However, what makes the current drought even stranger is the fact that Larson has not looked broken this season. The No. 5 HMS Chevrolet still has speed in flashes and bursts. Additionally, there have been weekends when he looked capable of winning by five seconds, only for strategy miscues, late cautions, pit-road errors, or plain bad luck to undo everything.
In hindsight, the numbers paint a mixed picture for Larson since Kansas. He has still shown race-winning speed at times, finishing runner-up in this year’s AdventHealth 400 while also recording third-place finishes at Phoenix and Bristol. But the inconsistency has been hard to ignore, with two DNFs offsetting much of the momentum from his six top-10 finishes this season.
The irony is that Larson never stopped winning elsewhere. He continues to collect dirt-track victories across the country and even parked JR Motorsports equipment in Victory Lane in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series earlier this season.
Part of the inconsistency has also reflected a broader dip at HMS. Outside of Chase Elliott’s strong run of form, the Cup Series’ most winningest team has looked less dominant than it did during its peak stretches over the past few years.
The new Chevrolet package has clearly forced teams into a longer adjustment process than many expected, and Larson’s No. 5 has often appeared stuck between searching for more speed and overcorrecting altogether.
The struggles at Watkins Glen International last week only added to the growing concerns. In fact, none of the four HMS drivers finished inside the top 20. Larson ended the day 23rd, followed by Elliott in 24th and Alex Bowman in 25th, while William Byron fell to 36th after getting collected in an incident that damaged the No. 24 Chevrolet.
Larson isn’t panicking, but he’s aware of the issues
The outside noise surrounding Larson’s drought has grown louder with every passing week, especially as his No. 9 teammate Elliott continues stacking strong finishes on the other side of the Hendrick garage. But Larson himself has shown little interest in treating the streak like some looming crisis.
“I think you guys pay attention to it way more than I pay attention to it,” Larson admitted recently at Watkins Glen International.
That response probably sums up Larson better than any stat sheet can. But even within that calm tone, there was an honest acknowledgment that the No. 5 team has simply not been consistently fast enough.
“But yeah, obviously I would have loved to have won to this point, but we just haven’t been good enough. I feel like at times, we’re really close to getting a win. And then at other times, I feel like we’re far from getting a win. I just kind of shows how tough this series is.
But yeah, I don’t know. We’re working really hard. I say the same thing every time you guys ask… it’s not like we’re not trying to win. We’re just kind of searching of how to be better and sometimes maybe search too much and get off track a little bit,” he added.
His crew chief, Cliff Daniels, has echoed a similar mindset internally. The team understands the drought is unusual, but the focus has been on avoiding emotional overreactions while continuing to search for answers.
On the flip side, the good news for Hendrick is that next up on the calendar is Dover Motor Speedway, historically one of the organization’s strongest tracks. Larson, Elliott, and Bowman have all won there before, making Dover a timely opportunity for the No. 5 team to finally end its year-long drought.
