Gone are those days when a NASCAR driver could dominate an entire season and clinch the championship. With the Next Gen car and parity racing, it is just tough for a race team to dominate every weekend. But what we saw last weekend at Kansas Speedway suggests that Kyle Larson and the No. 5 team have cracked the code to tackle this style of racing. The last time Larson won the championship was in 2021, when he bagged 10 wins. This was reminiscent of Richard Petty’s triumph of 1974, where he bagged 10 wins. With three race wins after 12 weekends, the HMS driver seems to be headed in that direction, but surprisingly, King Petty wasn’t particularly thrilled to see Larson bag the win at Kansas.

Leading 221 of 267 laps, sweeping the stages, he joined Dale Jarrett in the 29th spot for overall wins in the Cup Series. To cap it off, he clinched the top spot in the points standings. So what part about Larson’s dominance rubbed King Petty wrong? As it turns out, the Next Gen car delivers the best racing action at the mile-and-a-half tracks, and had it not been Larson’s day, fans would’ve been treated to thrilling racing action. Something like last year, where the race went down to the wire, where the HMS driver edged out Chris Buescher by 0.001 seconds.

Larson’s Kansas masterclass overshadowed a good racing spectacle

On the Petty Family Racing podcast, Petty broke down Larson’s Kansas performance, saying, “He was really really good on brand new tires, and he could outrun everybody by a quarter of a second but he’d get way out there and then after 40-50 laps his tires would completely quit.” Petty’s highlights how Larson made the most of his advantage by starting on the pole and kept himself in the front, winning stages 1 and 2. But, by no means was he untouchable; his teammate Chase Elliott got by him in the final stage, and that could’ve been the turning point in the race.

Petty’s co-host, legendary crew chief Dale Inman, chimed in with a playful jab, adding, “Well, if you’d took him out it, it’d have been a heck of a race,” to which Petty replied, “Oh, it would have been a heck of a race.” They were imagining a scenario where Larson’s No. 5 wasn’t in the mix, suggesting the field would’ve been wide open, with the top 20 battling fiercely. And that would be true, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, and even Alex Bowman could’ve had a shot at the win.

But unforced errors and freak accidents wiped out Larson’s opposition. Brad Keselowski, who was gaining on Elliott, crashed out after the ride side tire went flat, and this led to drivers pitting for fresh Goodyear tires. Elliott wanted to maintain his advantage in the final stage. And then came the big fumble on the pit road as the jackman delayed the stop for the No. 9 car, and it allowed Kyle Larson to get back into the lead. He wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity after his rivals missed their markers.

This win by the driver of the No. 5 Chevy saw him leapfrog his teammate William Byron to take the top spot in the point standings before heading for the All-Star race. In the last four races, Larson has finished inside the top 5 and two of them have resulted in victory lane visits. There was a lot of hype around Joe Gibbs Racing cars after Bell bagged a three-peat, and Denny Hamlin followed with a double. Many fans were questioning when HMS would fight back, but after 12 races and a look at the points standings, one can fairly say the tides have turned.

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The Richard Petty Era: A Problem Until David Pearson Came Along

Richard Petty knows what it’s like to be the “problem” in NASCAR—his own era in the 1960s and 1970s was a masterclass in domination. Nicknamed “The King,” Petty racked up 200 career wins, a record that still stands, and seven championships, tying him with Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson for the most all-time. His 1967 season alone saw him win 27 races, including 10 in a row, a feat that remains untouchable. Petty’s Plymouths and Dodges were unstoppable, often leading hundreds of laps, much like Larson at Kansas, and his consistency made him the driver everyone chased. But even The King had his match in David Pearson, who emerged as the one driver who could consistently challenge Petty’s reign.

Pearson, known as the “Silver Fox,” won 105 races and three championships, often outsmarting Petty with a calculated approach. Their rivalry was legendary—Pearson’s 1974 season, where he won 11 races in just 19 starts, showed he could match Petty’s pace. Petty’s dominance set the bar, but Pearson kept him in check, pushing him to elevate his game. Now, as Petty watches Larson and HMS dominate, he sees a similar challenge for the field: Larson’s a problem, just like Petty was, but it’ll take a modern-day Pearson to slow him down. And for those who have followed NASCAR in the Gen 7 era, that Pearson tag can be easily placed on Christopher Bell.