DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It’s been well established that NASCAR Cup Series champion and all-around racer Kyle Larson wants to compete in the Indianapolis 500 one day.
That day won’t be in 2022, however.
“I think it’s too late in the game for this year,” Larson said. “If I ever run the Indy 500, I want to be prepared. I want to show up with the feeling that I have a shot to win. I don’t want to just show up and be like oh I get to compete in the Indy 500, that is really cool.
“I want to go there and be confident and know that I have a shot to run up front.
“With that takes a lot of preparation, a lot of work and I don’t think that’s something you can fully get done in a few months.”
Larson is the one name that pretty much unifies both IndyCar and NASCAR fans when the question is asked, which driver outside of IndyCar would they like to see compete in the Indianapolis 500?
Because Larson has a strong open-wheel background from sprint car racing, and the fact that he won 10 NASCAR Cup races and the championship in 2021, he is a driver that could be a headliner if he ever did make an Indy 500 attempt.
It’s a dream of his to one day compete in the Indianapolis 500, but that’s not going to happen this May.
“Down the road, I’d like to do it, but I want to do it when the time is right and right now in February 2022 is not the right time,” Larson said. “I think it is something more so down the road, but I definitely want to do it someday. It was cool to read Jeff’s (Gordon) article or whatever that said they were open to it and yeah we will see.”
Gordon, now the Vice Chairman at Hendrick Motorsports, said recently that the team would support his decision if he wanted to make an Indy 500 attempt one day.
Former Hendrick Motorsports driver and seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson joined the NTT IndyCar Series last year on street and road courses. This year he is running the full schedule, including the 106th Indianapolis 500 on May 29.
The last big-name NASCAR driver to compete in the Indianapolis 500 was Kurt Busch, who finished sixth at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Andretti Autosport in 2014.
Tony Stewart was an IndyCar driver before he joined NASCAR and made several attempts at competing at Indy and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the same day.
“I have never talked to Tony about it, and I don’t, honestly, remember if I have talked to Kurt about it,” Larson said. “I am sure I have at some point while he was my teammate at Ganassi, but no I haven’t talked to anybody really about it. I’m sure once it becomes more of a reality that I could do it, I will probably talk to as many people as I can.
“For right now, I haven’t done my due diligence I guess and talked to other drivers who have done it.”