Since joining Hendrick Motorsports as Jimmie Johnson's replacement ahead of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season, no driver has performed at a higher level than Kyle Larson.
He is the only driver to have won at least three races in each of the past five seasons. His 10 wins in 2021 are the most in a single season since 2007, and his 26 total wins from 2021 to 2025 are by far the most during that stretch.
As the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet, he has made three Championship 4 appearances, won two championships, and he's only failed to get to at least the semifinal playoff round.
One of the key criticisms against Larson, however, is that he isn't consistent enough. He's too aggressive, takes too many chances, and still shows some of his reckless tendencies that plagued him back from his early years with Chip Ganassi Racing more often than a driver of his caliber should.
That argument might not be completely off base; just look at when he slammed into the sand barrels at the end of pit road at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2023. However, this idea that he is a "checkers or wreckers" type of driver holds no weight whatsoever.
He won the 2025 championship without winning a single race since May, while the other three drivers in the Championship 4 all won in the round of 8. Sure, the way he won the title was one of the cheapest ways you can possibly win, but even under a full-season points format, he still would have emerged on top.
And a full-season points format rewards what? Consistency.
Of course, when NASCAR announced the new championship format for the 2026 season, ending the era of the "win and in" knockout format that existed from 2014 to 2025 and elevating the importance of consistency beyond anything fans could have hoped for, fans immediately started doing the calculations as to who would have been champion had this format been implemented earlier.
And yes, Larson still would have won it in 2025. Imagine that.
Sure, Larson had 10 finishes of 20th or worst in 2025. But only two drivers had fewer, and Larson had fewer DNFs than both of them.
Larson is generally held to such a high standard, because of how much hype is around him and how loud (and many times obnoxious) his fanbase can be with the "generational talent" and "anything with four wheels" praise.
When he crashes out, it's much more of a "gotcha" moment than it is for anybody else, because he's allegedly the second coming of Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, and Tony Stewart combined, and then some. We get it; it's the NASCAR version of Cris Collinsworth talking about Patrick Mahomes, and at a certain point, it does get old and stale.
But the reality is he's no more inconsistent than any of his competitors, and his ceiling is still higher than all of theirs when he's at his best, and even sometimes when he's not.
And unlike IndyCar or Formula 1, NASCAR's points setup, combined with its racing parity in general, make it so that a driver doesn't absolutely need an insane streak of podium or even top five finishes to contend for championships.
Consistency is ironically why a supposedly "inconsistent" Larson won the 2025 title, despite going winless over the final 24 races of season, and it's why he would have won the 2025 title had the new format been used – or, quite frankly, even if no playoff format had been used.
With the 36-driver field inevitably set to approach the title fight slightly different in 2026 under NASCAR's new championship format, who will emerge on top? The season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, February 15 with the 68th annual Daytona 500, which is set to be shown live on Fox from Daytona International Speedway starting at 2:30 p.m. ET.