Normally, a 4th-place finish would make for a decent race weekend as far as Kyle Larson was concerned. But his reaction post-race in Michigan on Sunday had little to do with track position. The Cracker Barrel 400 became a race riddled with cautions, featuring 11 yellow flags (a new track record) and 54 laps spent behind the pace car. The Hendrick Motorsports driver was absolutely infuriated with the system.

“Man, I feel like, dude, we’ve been running under caution so much. It feels like we spent half the races under yellow, which has been frustrating, but uh, we’d like to get some green flag racing in,” the 2025 Cup Series champ said on Sirius XM Radio.

Larson didn’t really have a bad afternoon. But the race never seemed to settle, with yellow flags popping out at short intervals. There were 108 miles worth of racing action under caution at the Michigan International Speedway on Sunday. And Larson felt the frustration firsthand, particularly during Stage 2.

After taking two tires under a Lap 21 caution, he restarted on the front row alongside Chase Elliott. Larson ran second behind Elliott, but a series of cautions kept wiping out the gap between them before Elliott went on to win the stage on Lap 120. The field was shuffled again on a Lap 148 restart when Elliott spun from the lead group, triggering a major crash that brought out the red flag.

Unlike F1 and other international racing series, NASCAR doesn’t use local yellow flags or virtual safety cars on oval tracks. Any incident on track leads to the field being packed together, neutralizing any advantage built by any driver on the track.

This has polarized the NASCAR community for a long time. Some feel that frequent restarts add excitement that a race might otherwise lack, while others believe they reward survival and luck rather than dominance.

And in Michigan, it was a restart that led to a nine-car pileup.

On lap 83, Carson Hocevar ran into John Hunter Nemechek from behind during a tight restart. Nemechek spun out, triggering a nine-car crash that also ended the races of Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick.

Larson avoided a DNF on this incident. His car was one of nine damaged, but a pit stop kept him alive. Ironically, pitting early for repairs forced him onto an alternate strategy, and navigating the chaotic cautions allowed him to rally. Larson finished fourth behind a Toyota podium sweep led by Denny Hamlin.

Kyle Larson Opens Up on His Winless Streak

While Kyle Larson‘s criticism of NASCAR’s caution-heavy races grabbed attention, another topic continues to follow him every week: his 39-race winless streak.

Larson hasn’t won a points-paying Cup race since Kansas Speedway in May 2025. That’s the longest winless streak of his Hendrick Motorsports (he joined them in 2021) career. For most drivers, a drought that long would raise questions about their performance. Larson, however, sees it differently.

“I don’t feel bummed or sad or anything of that nature that we haven’t won in over a year now because we have been consistent.”

His reasoning is simple. The No. 5 team isn’t struggling to run near the front. “We’re sixth in points, we’re not too far out of fourth,” he added in the same interview.

That’s why Kyle Larson pushes back when people describe his season as a slump. In his view, a slump means running outside the top 10 and lacking for speed. That’s not what’s happening. Instead, he believes the biggest difference has been the rise of Toyota.

“We’ve had less opportunities to win just because the Gibbs, the Toyota cars are so fast.”

Michigan backed up that argument. Toyota drivers locked out the podium, with Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones, and Bubba Wallace finishing first, second, and third. Larson was the highest-finishing Chevrolet driver in fourth.

Toyota’s updated Camry body has performed particularly well in traffic, an area where Larson and Hendrick Motorsports have admitted they still need improvement. For them, when the car gets trapped in dirty air, the No. 5 driver loses some of the strength that normally makes him so dangerous on long runs.