Kyle Larson, the driver we always knew would lead the pack, now falls in the middle of it. It’s been a year since he won his last Cup Series race, the last being at Kansas in May of 2025. Despite mostly showing consistent speed in 2026, his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team has yet to cross the line at the front.

Larson, however, downplayed the outside narrative as he said, “I think you guys pay attention to it way more than I pay attention to it,” before admitting, “Obviously, I would have loved to have won to this point, but we just haven't been good enough.”

This discussion gets even more stressful for the legend after we note that his teammate, Chase Elliott, has already scored multiple wins quite early in the season.

He further added, “I feel like at times we're really close to getting a win, and then, you know, at times I feel like we're far from getting a win, so it just kind of shows how tough this series is.”

Entering Watkins Glen, Larson remains inside the top ten in points while continuing to lead laps consistently, but he's not able to convert that into wins. In fact, he's finished in the top-5 only thrice in these 11 races.

However, Larson reminded us not to overcomplicate our thoughts as he added, “We're just kind of searching for how to be better and sometimes maybe search too much and get off track a little bit,” before concluding, “We've made this sport, the Cup Series, look easy at times, and I've never thought it was.”

But is the situation really that dire, or isn’t Larson able to compete at all?

Kyle Larson’s speed is not the problem

Kyle Larson’s winless streak looks even weirder when we take a look at how he has performed. Take just the opening 11 races of the 2026 season, where he has already led 499 laps, which is among the highest totals in the entire garage, and still not converted even a single victory.

Another example comes at Bristol, where Larson led the race through 284 laps, cleaning through both stages before balance swings and dirty air forced him to finish third. It doesn’t even end there.

Take another example, Kansas, where Larson led 78 laps, won Stage 2, and put on an excellent pace, but just bad execution in strategy dropped him to second. Even at Las Vegas, he led 62 laps before slowly fading to seventh.

So clearly, the problem isn’t within the driver, but in closing strategies. And team Hendrick needs to fix this soon before it gets too difficult for both Larson and the team.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason