NASCAR champion Kyle Larson snubbed in driver rankings?

NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson wasn’t ranked where you might expect in Autosport’s “Top 50 drivers” list for 2021, despite having had one of the greatest seasons in the history of the sport.

Autosport released their annual “Top 50 drivers” list for the 2021 season, featuring drivers from all kinds of different series across the world of motorsport, including but certainly not limited to Formula 1, NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula E. As usual, quite a few of their rankings got fans talking.

After all, what is the point of a mega rankings list such as this? As usual, the time and effort put into a project like this is unmatched, and the publicity generated from it is well deserved.

Nobody can argue against the top two, the same top two from last year and the year before that. The order of those top two may lead to some intense debate, however.

But once again, NASCAR wasn’t given nearly the recognition it deserves, and this time around, it was more obvious.

2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion — and dominator — Kyle Larson found himself ranked eighth.

Only three of the top seven drivers won championships in 2021 (Formula 1’s Max Verstappen, World Rally Championship’s Sebastien Ogier, and IndyCar’s Alex Palou).

While a few Formula 1 drivers benefitted in these rankings from the fact that they achieved what they achieved in cars not truly capable of winning, the fact that a full quarter of 2021’s Formula 1 drivers (five) appeared in the top seven only adds to Larson’s case for a much higher spot.

The write-up for the driver of Hendrick Motorsports’ #5 Chevrolet, completed by Jim Utter, was justifiably high on praise for the 29-year-old Elk Grove, California native — so much so that you’d expect to it be a write-up for somebody in the top three or four, perhaps even higher than that.

Larson pulled off the first 10-win season for a driver since Jimmie Johnson won the second of five consecutive championships for Hendrick Motorsports in 2007, and he did it in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports. Aside from Larson and Johnson, nobody else has won 10 races in a season since the 36-race era begin in 2001.

He also led 2,581 laps, the most ever in the 36-race era. This broke a record that had been held by former Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon from 2001 (2,320).

Even more impressive was the fact that not only did he pull this off in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports, but the fact that he did it without competing throughout the 2020 season.

After the season was halted due to COVID-19-related restrictions following the first four races, Larson was suspended indefinitely by NASCAR and fired by Chip Ganassi Racing. He had used a racial slur during an iRacing event, prompting multiple sponsors to cut ties with him.

There was never any guarantee that Larson would compete again in the Cup Series, but the driver known for being able win in anything on wheels looked as though he hadn’t skipped a beat right from the start, winning in just his fourth start with Hendrick Motorsports back in early March at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to break the team record.

Get this: if you were to only include the 2021 season’s final eight races for Larson, but include the entire 36-race season for everybody else, Larson would still lead the series in wins with five.

And nobody has won more races than Larson since last year’s unexpected stoppage, despite the fact that Larson did not compete in any of the 2020 season’s final 32 events.

The 2021 season was truly one for the history books, and he capped it off with a title. Ranking him as the eighth best driver simply doesn’t do him justice.

You could even make the case that Larson deserved to be in the top four if he had finished the season finale in fourth place among the Championship 4 drivers.

No matter what happens throughout the season, four drivers lock into the Championship 4 to conclude the four-round, 10-race, 16-driver playoffs; the determination of the champion is not based on season-long point totals, a list which was also topped by Larson (see here).

A driver could literally win 34 of the season’s first 35 races and then lose the championship to a driver who finished the regular season ranked 30th in points simply because that driver got into the playoffs with a regular season win.

As for Larson’s relatively low ranking, this is nothing new for NASCAR, considering the fact that last year’s champion, Chase Elliott, was ranked 28th last year.

In fact, Larson’s ranking is much higher than many recent drivers competing at stock car racing’s highest level have earned.

Even Kevin Harvick, who, despite missing out on the Championship 4, ranked highest for the sport last year because of the fact that his nine wins were the most for any driver since 2008, only ranked 14th.  Only one other NASCAR driver, Denny Hamlin (24th), was included in those rankings.

The 2019 champion, Kyle Busch, ranked 27th. But he was one of four NASCAR drivers included in that edition (all ranked lower).

In this year’s rankings, Larson was one of only two NASCAR drivers, the other being series runner-up Martin Truex Jr. (27th).

Truex, in a Lewis Hamilton-esque kind of way (but not nearly as controversially), saw his chance of winning the title crumble as a result of a late yellow. He ended the year with four victories, tied for second most with Alex Bowman.