After clinching his second NASCAR Cup championship on November 2 in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, you would think Kyle Larson would be taking it easy during the off-season. Any other driver likely would welcome nearly three months of rest and relaxation after the season like Larson had. But not Larson.

To him, going on vacation means even more racing.

In the last month, the Elk Grove, California native has competed in several races, primarily USAC Midgets, as well as racing on Thanksgiving Night in Ventura, Calif. Sure, he’s had a couple of days downtime after winning his Cup championship with his family on the beach in Mexico, but the 33-year-old has even more racing scheduled for this month and into January.

There will be a few more races in the U.S. before he makes his annual trip to Australia to race down under. He leaves the U.S. on Christmas Night and will compete in the second annual Kubota High Limit Racing International event in the Motorplex in Perth, on December 28-30. He was also supposed to compete in an Australian Supercars event, but has withdrawn.

Larson won last year’s inaugural Kubota International event in Australia, taking home the biggest check in Australian sprint car history, $100,000 Australian dollars (over $65,000 in US dollars). He’s back to make it two wins in a row with this year’s race, where the first-place prize money has been bumped to $110,000 Australian dollars (over $72,000 USD).

No sooner will that event conclude and Larson will head back across the Pacific Ocean for his son Owen’s 11th birthday on December 31, then hopes to compete in the Tulsa Shootout (micro sprint car race), then watch his kids race the week before he is back in the seat for the annual Chili Bowl Nationals midget car race (Jan. 12-17).

Larson will finally take a couple of weeks off afterward, but then he is back to kick off more than 10 months of NASCAR racing with the Cook Out Clash preseason event at Bowman Gray Stadium on February 1. He’ll also be kicking off his usual part-time schedule in the sprint car series he co-founded a couple of years ago with brother-in-law Brad Sweet, namely, Kubota High Limit Racing.

Two weeks after the Clash, Larson will be back at Daytona International Speedway for the season-opening Daytona 500, the sport’s biggest and most lucrative race on the 36-race points-paying race schedule.

Speaking of schedule, there will be one significant change to Larson’s dance card this coming year: after two attempts at competing in The Double – IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 on the same day – Larson will not make a third attempt at both events. It’s unclear if he ever will race at Indy in the 500 again.

“All my racing kind of took a dip after May (crashed at Indy),” Larson said Monday on the opening day of the four-day Epartrade Race Industry Week. “So, yeah, probably my confidence took a hit personally.

“I didn’t feel like I performed how I could have or should have. And I made a lot of mistakes throughout the couple weeks there (at Indy) and crashed a few times. I was just kind of bummed out about that.”

But even without a return to Indy, the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet is already planning on something just as big: winning a second consecutive Cup crown and third overall (he also won in 2021).

And while he’s enjoying his off-season extracurricular activity, Larson’s No. 1 focus is simple.

He admittedly had a rough middle third of the 2025 Cup season.

“We were in a pretty mediocre spot for a few months,” Larson said. “It was hard to get out of it, but I think with all those struggles, we all worked really hard and just kept believing in each other and was slowly making progress for the playoffs.

“Even throughout the playoffs, I feel like we progressed and it led us to do what we needed to do to win a championship. All that was pretty crazy to see, kind of how bad the summer was to where you end up.

“(Crew chief) Cliff Daniels and his leadership kept us on the right path and kept us zoned in on what we needed to do and keep working.”

Because his off-season schedule has been so jam-packed, there’ve been a couple of inadvertent glitches that have occurred.

One of those glitches came when Larson took part in a photo shoot ahead of 2026 shortly after winning his second Cup crown.

“We did our photo shoot stuff like two weeks after the season,” Larson said. “And they saw the old patch on (his firesuit). So I was like, ‘Man, you have to Photoshop all this stuff (to make the patch indicate his second Cup championship).

“But no, it’s definitely cool. Hopefully this time next year it’ll have a 3X on it.

“Really, we just try to keep going out there and doing a good job. And then I think the accolades and results and stats and all that will take care of themselves.”