On Tuesday, Kyle Larson was asked by NBC Sports if his Chip Ganassi Racing team had replaced powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports as Chevrolet’s top team in NASCAR. The driver’s response was controversial, accusing the HMS juggernaut of cheating.
“I feel like Hendrick plays games, in a way, with NASCAR. I feel like they always start the year off kind of bad to, like, show NASCAR that they’re being nice and cooperating and following the rules and stuff, and then, it gets a couple of months in, and they start cheating and finding some speed,” Larson said.
Larson back-tracked Tuesday night, though, apologizing for the accusation and claiming he was joking.
“I want to apologize to Mr. [Rick] Hendrick and Team Hendrick for the comments I made earlier today,” Larson [@KyleLarsonRacin] tweeted. “I feel terrible about it. I meant it jokingly, but shouldn’t have implied they are anything but a strong competitor that gets better as the season goes on. I appreciate the engine support we get from them as they are major part of the reason we have been as strong as we are.”
Chip Ganassi Racing gets its engines from Hendrick Motorsports.
Larson is the highest-ranked Chevrolet driver in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points standings, in fourth, two races into the 36-race points standings. He led 142 laps before a pit-road speeding penalty in Sunday’s 325 lap Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. His CGR teammate, Kurt Busch, finished third after running near the front for a significant portion of the race.
The highest-finishing of the four Hendrick Motorsports drivers [Jimmie Johnson, Alex Bowman, William Byron and Chase Elliott] at Atlanta was Alex Bowman in 15th. The HMS drivers only have one top-10 finish among them in the first two races, Jimmie Johnson’s ninth-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. Even though Hendrick swept the front row in Daytona 500 qualifying, with William Byron on the pole and Bowman next to him on the front row, the only laps led by a HMS driver in the first two races were 44 laps led by Byron at Daytona.
Johnson hasn’t won a Cup Series race in over a year-and-a-half. But his most recent wins were three victories in the first 13 races of the 2017 season. Chase Elliott was the only Hendrick driver to win last year, winning three races in the final 17 of the 36 points-paying races of 2018. Those three wins were the only 2018 wins for Chevrolet, other than Austin Dillon’s win of last year’s Daytona 500.
Larson’s last win came at Richmond Raceway in the 26th race of the 2017 season. He claimed four of his five-career wins during the 2017 season.
