NASCAR: Kyle Larson won’t be the next Kevin Harvick

The clear NASCAR Cup Series championship favorite last year failed to advance to the Championship 4, but Kyle Larson doesn’t have much to worry about in 2021.

Kevin Harvick entered the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs seeming like a lock to get to the Championship 4 after winning the regular season championship along with seven of the final 22 races. He solidified that status by winning two of the first three playoff races.

But despite winning nine races, the most by any driver in a single season since 2008, the 2014 champion failed to get past the round of 8 and missed out on the Championship 4 for the first time since 2016.

This year’s “Kevin Harvick” from a domination standpoint has obviously been Kyle Larson.

Larson won the regular season championship with five race wins, and he has since added to his win total with a round of 16 playoff win at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The driver who missed most of last season after being both suspended by NASCAR and fired by his former team for an off-track issue is performing at the highest level of his career, having already doubled his career win total from six to 12, and he has established himself as the clear favorite to win the title.

Larson has been and is still listed by WynnBET as the favorite to win the 2021 championship when the title decider is contested at Phoenix Raceway in early November.

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But this sounds all too familiar to the fans who remember what happened to Harvick down the stretch last year. However, with all things considered, there is an approximately 0% chance that the same thing happens to Larson.

Larson has accrued 59 playoff points so far this season. That total is more than twice as many as any other driver in the series. He is set to enter the round of 12 a whopping 30 points ahead of the next highest driver in the standings.

Harvick had accrued 67 playoff points at this point last season, but there was a much more condensed group of contenders by that point; the field was more top-heavy. Two other drivers had won at least four races, and one of them sat just 19 points behind Harvick.

This year, Larson is one of only two drivers with more than three wins, and among the remaining 12 playoff drivers this year, 11 have won at least one race. Last year, that number was eight.

There are simply not going to be eight different drivers who manage to close that huge points gap on Larson in the round of 12. Even with three different championship-eligible winners not named Larson, there aren’t going to be five, either — and in the round of 8, there are not going to be four who manage to close that gap.

And let’s be honest; there are not going to be three different winners not named Larson in consecutive rounds.

But even if there are three different winners in the round of 8, Larson still has that massive points gap that somebody else will need to close. Yes, Harvick had a big gap as well, and two drivers, not just one, actually passed him on points since there were just two different championship-eligible winners in the round of 8, but here’s where a key difference lies in that regard.

Larson has 14 stage wins this year. Last year at this time, Harvick had seven. In the off chance he doesn’t manage to win more playoff races, this will be the single most important reason why Larson won’t find himself in the same position that Harvick did last year.

I’m not talking about the additional playoff points Larson gets for winning more stages; let’s not forget, Harvick actually had more total playoff points at this point last season. I’m talking about the actual stage points Larson is able to accrue by winning stages.

Harvick scored just one stage point in the final two races of last year’s round of 12, and the difference between him advancing and not advancing to the Championship 4 in the closing laps of the round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway was one point.

Even with a round of 8 that saw him finish outside the top 15 twice in three races, he would have advanced with just two stage points at Texas Motor Speedway or Martinsville Speedway.

And we’d be remiss not to mention the call for rain at the former, the call that came after Harvick had already hit the wall and effectively ruined his race.

Bottom line, too many things would have to go wrong for Larson to find himself even close to missing the Championship 4.

There is another thing to consider here as well. For those who like to figure out who the “points champions” would be without including the playoffs, you know that Harvick would be a four-time champion as opposed to a one-time champion.

So it stands to reason that, since the Championship 4 was introduced, Harvick is the only regular season champion to have not gotten to the Championship 4 — and he has failed to do so on two occasions.

Jeff Gordon did it in 2014, Martin Truex Jr. did it in 2017, and Kyle Busch did it in 2018 and 2019. Harvick did do it in 2015, but he failed to do so in 2016 and 2020.

So history itself actually favors Larson quite heavily, despite what happened with last year’s most dominant driver as the final race weekend of the season approached.