Larson admits Cup's summer swing has 'been a struggle' for the No. 5

Kyle Larson doesn’t deny his Hendrick Motorsports team is in a summer slump, but he laughs about how it seemed to start after an anticlimactic ending to his Memorial Day double attempt in May, when he crashed in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600.

“I would like to think it’s a coincidence, but then you never know,” he said with a smile Saturday at Dover Motor Speedway. “And even my dirt racing has kind of turned a little bit. I don’t know. It’s life and all that sometimes.”

The crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway gave way to back-to-back top 10 finishes at Nashville Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway. A week later, Larson was collected in a crash in Mexico City, which started when Kyle Busch slid out of control in the rain less than five laps into the race.

Over the last four races, Larson finished inside the top 10 once – a seventh-place effort at Pocono.

“It’s been a struggle, no doubt,” Larson said. “We weren’t where we needed to be on speed. At the beginning of the struggles, I felt like when we didn’t have the speed, we were executing well. I think of Nashville and Michigan as out-performing where we should have been, which was good. Then we had some races where we got caught up in some unfortunate things, too, and it all snowballed and led into the next week.

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“Just been tough to get out of the rut, but through it all, I do believe we’ll come out the other side even stronger, and that’s what every team hopes.”

Larson was leading the Cup Series point standings before the Coca-Cola 600. He entered the weekend off a win at Kansas Speedway – his most recent to date. It was also his third in the first 12 races.

The slump, however, hasn’t set the team back too far. Larson is third in the standings behind teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott, and still has an opportunity to win the regular season title (and its 15 bonus points).

“I’m glad we’re at Dover, even though we don’t know how the weekend is going to turn out,” Larson said. “But statistically it’s been a good track for us, and hopefully we can start getting back to where we were two months ago.”

Larson, the 2021 series champion, admitted the stretch is the toughest he’s ever had with results and speed. Admittedly, he doesn’t know where he ranks on speed in the series, but he imagines it’s not near the top.

Dover is one of Larson’s best racetracks in the series. Of his 16 starts, he's failed to finish inside the top 10 on only four occasions. In the last races, he has one win and four finishes of sixth or better, including a runner-up finish last year.

 “It’s just deflating sometimes when it’s every week of something, whether it be speed or a little bit of bad luck,” Larson said. “It’s like, ‘Man, when are we going to get out of this?’ I think difficult times help the team become stronger, and I think that’s the mindset we’ve had the weeks we’ve been going through [it].

"Feel good about this weekend, but again, you never know what could happen.”