Kyle Larson has been here before. He won the Round of 8 opener at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2021 and turned that into a championship at the Phoenix Raceway three weeks later. Can he do so again in two weeks time?

Larson swept both stages and led 133 of 267 laps in Sunday’s South Point 400 en route to another win in the opening race of the third round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

The winner of the Round of 8 opener has gone on to win the championship in 3 of the last 5 years including 2 straight. It’s a massive advantage.

“Sheer speed and stuff, I feel like we’ve been very similar to where we were in 2021,” Larson said after his fourth win of the season last Sunday. “We’ve probably contended for as many wins as we did then. These Next Gen races are tougher to win.

“I’ve said that all along since the beginning of the year that this feels very similar to 2021. Thankfully, we’re in position like we were in 2021. Hopefully, we can cap it off like we did then, too.”

That 2021 season Larson led over 2,000 laps and reached victory lane 10 times. While he has 6 less wins thus far in 2023, he has eclipsed the 1,000 lap led barrier and is the first driver in this Next Gen era to do so.

One could say that it’s harder to win now than ever before with so much parity and how much change that this car has brought forth. Which is why Larson’s crew chief, Cliff Daniels, is tempering expectations some.

“I don’t know that it’s a lot different just because of the new car,” he nots. “To me, just from the team exercise dynamic of things, if we say we’re just going to cruise for the next two weeks, then you’re not operating with the edge that I think you’re going to need to win it in Phoenix.

“There’s two more races to win. So now the way I see it is this. Now that we’re in the position that we’re in, we get to play those races to win, a late call, flipping a stage, if a caution comes out, whatever it may be, versus having to play the race for points. I think that’s the position it puts us in the next two weeks.

“From a team exercise, all those other guys are so good, they’re going to be pushing hard to win the next two weeks. I think we have to match that intensity so we’re going into Phoenix with the right level of intensity ourselves, get there with strength.”

Which is why the debate is a double-edged sword. you don’t want to completely punt on the next two races at Homestead and Martinsville because you don’t want to risk losing this momentum and speed that they’ve shown to have found. You also don’t want to risk getting complacent and falling out of rhythm then having in the most pressure packed situation of the entire season in a winner-take-all race for the championship, have to just turn it back on again.

On the flip side, you don’t want to waste being the only driver that has clinched a spot into the final round either.

“Obviously it’s nice to win and lock in, so you can focus on Phoenix,” said Larson. “At the same point you really can’t look too far ahead of yourself. There’s still two other races before then. I put a lot of pressure on myself going to Homestead. I want to have a great run there. I want to dominate honestly. I want to win both stages by 15 seconds and win the race by 30 (smiling). That’s my goal. … I just put a lot of pressure on myself and our team to not get complacent and treat every race like it means something.”

Last year, Joey Logano had the rare advantage as well as being the only driver from the Round of 8 to spend the last two weeks knowing that he’s racing for a championship in Phoenix. He won the third-round opener in Las Vegas. With Larson winning in Homestead a week later, it meant that Logano came into Martinsville (the cutoff race) as the only one still knowing that he’s racing for a championship. Why would the other 7 dream of Phoenix when they first have to get to Phoenix?

“We’ve had three weeks to think about our race car and how we want to play the race out, how we want to run practice,” Logano said a year ago in this moment. “We’ve had the opportunity to really, really dive deep into Phoenix, so we’ll take that to our advantage and move on.

“Well, it’s really nice because it’s even a bigger advantage than it was when we were racing in Miami because the car has to leave sooner now, right? We had to leave Wednesday noontime to get here on time.

“If you imagine, like, you got to be really prepared because if you race Sunday and you finally realize you’re in, then you have Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday you better be done with everything.

“In that time, the driver has to go do media, the driver has all these other things they got to do on top of that. There’s not time to prep the correct way, whereas our team, we’ve had a couple weeks to really focus in 100%, at least 95%, on Phoenix.

“We had a conversation about Miami. Yeah, sure, sounds good, let’s do it. What about Phoenix? That’s how our conversations were, as they should be. The only one that matters is Sunday.”

For Larson, he is the defending race winner at Homestead. He swept both stages and dominated last year’s race. He also won the Southern 500 at Darlington last month and restarted on the front row inside of 10 laps to go in the spring Darlington race too. That track is the most similar to Homestead.

If Larson can win on Sunday, that forces the other 7 drivers to still have to focus on Martinsville and not Phoenix yet.

Then, he won the last race at Martinsville this past spring. He was runner-up in this playoff race a year ago. What if he wins that race too?

“I’m glad I won and locked in, but I like that now I can go to Homestead, Martinsville and just race,” said Larson. “You’re not really focused on points. You can be a little more aggressive now, trying to, yeah, just win really is the goal. At the same point, you don’t want to piss anybody off before we get to Phoenix, so that’s also a goal, is to race everybody fairly and not be a part of the story really the next couple weeks, other than winning would be great.”

If Larson were to win the title this season, he would join the below drivers as a multiple season champion.

Drivers with Multiple Championships (1949-2022)
Rank	No. of Titles	Driver	Years
1	7	Jimmie Johnson	2016, ‘13, ’10, ‘09, ‘08, ‘07, ‘06
		Dale Earnhardt	1994, ’93, ‘91, ‘90, ‘87, ‘86, ‘80
		Richard Petty	1979, ‘75, ‘74, ‘72, ‘71, ‘67, ‘64
4	4	Jeff Gordon	2001, ‘98, ‘97, ‘95
5	3	Darrell Waltrip	1985, ‘82, ‘81
		Cale Yarborough	1978, ‘77, ‘76
		David Pearson	1969, ‘68, ‘66
		Lee Petty	1959, ‘58, ‘54
		Tony Stewart	2011, ‘05, ‘02
10	2	Joey Logano	2022, ’18
		Kyle Busch	2019, ’15
		Terry Labonte	1996, ‘84
		Ned Jarrett	1965, ‘61
		Joe Weatherly	1963, ‘62
		Buck Baker	1957, ‘56
		Tim Flock	1955, ‘52
		Herb Thomas	1953, ‘51
* 17 total multiple NASCAR Cup Series champions

What’s scary for the rest of the field is, Daniels and Larson think that they’re just getting better and better and that they honestly feel like in 2023, they’re stronger this season than they were in the championship winning one of 2021.

“I think as a team, we are significantly stronger,” Daniels says. “Results don’t show it at all. If you look at the results chart, which I have in my office of the 5 team all year, it’s just up and down.

“But the reason that I say that it is of course we’ve had two more years to gel together, to work together. The chemistry has only gotten stronger. But also because of what we’ve been through this year where what I alluded to with the up-and-down finishes. Let’s be honest, some of those up-and-down finishes we created, both the good and the bad.

“It’s a really good team growth exercise to go through some of the tough times and learn how to communicate and lean on each other and find the core strength that you need to come out on the backside of a weekend, where maybe we screwed up or didn’t get the result that we needed. There’s just been a lot of learning and a lot of growth through that.

“I think the two years under our belt mixed with such a volatile season that we’ve had, we’ve had to learn how to play tough and be resilient. I think our team is in a very, very strong position right now.”

With the Vegas win, Larson and Daniels now have 16 victories together. This is the highest total in the sport since the duo was first paired together ahead of the 2021 season. Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon loves what he has seen out of the combination. 

“You take a guy like Kyle (Larson) and his capabilities and his talent. He’s impressed me with his work ethic, too,” Gordon said. “I wasn’t sure how he approached the (NASCAR) Cup Series, especially with (crew chief) Cliff (Daniels) and all the data, all the homework that Cliff gives him and the meetings they have. Cliff is an intense guy and he brings a lot to the table. It’s a lot of information that you have to absorb.

“He stepped up to the plate and has done everything that the organization can possibly ask out of him and then some. It’s been a great relationship.”

Hendrick Motorsports has won the round opener in all three rounds this postseason. Larson won at Darlington, William Byron won at Texas (Round of 12 opener) and Larson won again in Vegas. If Larson can win again in Phoenix, it would make HMS 4-for-4 this postseason in opening round races and hand HMS their 15th Cup Series championship.