Bob Pockrass
FOX Motorsports Insider
Kyle Larson stirred things up a little bit by saying he wanted to embarrass Xfinity Series drivers when he races against them.
And it isn’t because he takes joy in crushing the competition. He really wants to show the difference between Cup racing and the Xfinity Series. And he wants to prove to young, up-and-coming drivers how far behind they are compared to where they want to go.
Larson has a point. And it is a chorus that Kevin Harvick has been singing for years.
Kyle Larson MAKES STATEMENT after Cup & Xfinity win at Bristol: ‘I want to EMBARRASS NASCAR!’
Drivers enter Cup racing without enough experience racing Cup drivers. Therefore, they don’t know just how cut-throat they need to be and how to race for the win against tougher competition.
“The kids, they probably think they’re in a good spot, and they don’t know where the bar is really at,” Larson said. “So I like to go run those Xfinity races and get 10-second leads to let them realize that they’ve got a lot of room to improve, and I think that’s only better for our sport.”
Ty Gibbs is the latest to learn. He won 21 percent of his Xfinity races before his rookie Cup year in 2023. And he’s still seeking his first Cup win.
Cup drivers with more than three years of full-time Cup experience are limited to five races a year in the Xfinity series and in the truck series. They can’t race in the final eight races of the year — the regular-season finale and the playoffs.
NASCAR has limited Cup participation so that Xfinity drivers have better chances of winning. This helps boost their profiles in the eyes of Cup owners and in the eyes of sponsor executives — both those in the series and potential ones in Cup.
So what’s the answer?
First off, it’s the same thing that many have advocated for in Cup. It’s called practice.
Additional practice in Xfinity and trucks would allow young drivers to get more comfortable with the track that weekend. It gives them more laps, and there is no substitution for that when it comes to growth and learning. The younger drivers would get more out of practice and make more gains each weekend and throughout the course of the year.
NASCAR could also possibly just get rid of the five-race limit and just keep the final eight-race rule. It makes sense to not have Cup drivers in the Xfinity and truck playoffs. Just how many drivers would actually run more than five races anyway? Only a few most likely.
Could NASCAR create a way to potentially give a Cup driver more races, if paired in a full-time car with a non-Cup driver (or two drivers) in a way to attract sponsor dollars? Would a sponsor pay for both the Cup drivers’ additional races and then add enough for a new driver to fill in for many of the remaining races?
It would probably be difficult to manage and enforce, but there could be some way to incentivize teams to field young drivers by pairing this with more races for a Cup driver.
The biggest question is whether Cup drivers would dominate.
Let’s go back 20 to 30 years when a slew of Cup drivers ran in the series. They often had their engines tuned for a little more horsepower, and they would run more of a risk of blowing the engine because they weren’t running for points. Doing that now would be more difficult, considering the engine rules and the tighter parameters.
This conversation about the Cup drivers in the other series isn’t new. It’s been a topic in the sport for 20 years or more. And NASCAR has achieved its goal of giving Xfinity and truck drivers more notoriety since they’re able to win more races, as Cup drivers have limited access to those series.
But it wouldn’t be a bad thing for NASCAR to evaluate the policy and see if it should make some tweaks to its policy of limiting Cup drivers in developmental competition. The fact the series needs a new entitlement sponsor for 2026 also makes it a perfect time to visit this again. This way, any changes can be made at the same time that a new sponsor enters the fray.
If NASCAR does change it, Larson needs to run more races. Because of his comments, every time he runs in the series, he will have a target on him. Drivers will want to avoid embarrassment, but they’ll also try to embarrass him — if they can.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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