Kyle Larson may not have won Sunday's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with Bubba Wallace able to hold him off following two overtime restarts and a red flag for rain that initially looked as though it might have robbed him of a sure victory, but for the second year in a row, he made a statement that NASCAR fans can't afford to ignore.
And make no mistake about it; that statement was, once again, a gift for IndyCar fans and fans of the Indy 500.
The past two years, Larson has run the Indy 500 in an attempt to achieve the Memorial Day Double, and he has done so with his Cup team, Hendrick Motorsports, in partnership with the Arrow McLaren team behind the wheel of the No. 17 Chevrolet.
Among active NASCAR drivers, Larson was always the guy fans wanted to see run the Indy 500. No one else had done the Double since Kurt Busch in 2014, and Busch ran an impressive race to finish sixth in his series debut.
Entering last year's Indy 500, Larson was the outright betting favorite.
With no IndyCar experience whatsoever.
Outside of Larson's dedicated fanbase, anybody could see how ridiculous that was, and it didn't take long for even his own fans to come to that conclusion. Twice.
Both of Larson's Indy 500 attempts fell far shy of these unreasonable expectations. His highlight was qualifying fifth last year, and pretty much everything else was an experience to forget, aside from the fact that he can, after missing last year's Coca-Cola 600 due to two weather delays, finally say that he has indeed done it.
He completely bottled an early restart last year, losing several positions and forcing those around him to take evasive action to avoid a collision. He battled back to run inside the top 10 but cost himself what probably would have been a seventh or eighth place finish with a pit road speeding penalty (though admittedly, those can bite even the best IndyCar drivers; just ask Scott Dixon).
Then in 2025, notably after Larson told the media that the cars "aren't hard to drive", it seemed like he was getting himself into trouble every time he went out on the race track.
He wrecked out of the open test only a couple laps in, wrecked again in practice before qualifying weekend, and bottled another restart on race day, taking out two other innocent bystanders with that wreck (after having the audacity to sarcastically give a thumbs-up to Scott McLaughlin for wrecking out on the pace lap, a petty move for which he later apologized).
Larson may be one of the world's most versatile drivers, and in that sense, he's one of a very rare breed whom race fans are privileged to watch. Names like A.J Foyt and Tony Stewart are often brought up as comparisons.
And no, he never came right out and said "I'm the best driver in the world" like some constantly use to diss him.
But it's fairly obvious to all objective eyes that he is not just some four-wheel phenom who is just automatically faster than anybody he competes against in anything he drives. And his brief IndyCar experience exposed that, while also elevating IndyCar in the eyes of the many casual fans who tuned in the past two years thinking it would be yet another Larson walk in the park.
The fact that he followed up both of his far-from-perfect Indy 500 experiences with the Brickyard 400 runs he had only furthered that point.
Larson won last year's Brickyard 400, which was a statement in and of itself, and he was a contender again on Sunday before falling just shy of Wallace, even amid a summer stretch in which he has been about as invisible as he has been since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
On raw talent, the guy is clearly NASCAR's top driver. Are there 10 or 12 guys capable of beating him each week? Sure; two things can be true. NASCAR isn't Formula 1, where only two guys have a chance of winning simply because they have fast race cars.
But that talent and ability is by no means an excuse to lessen the talent and ability of the drivers in other top-level series. IndyCar is not Double-A baseball.
For those who just assumed Larson would wipe the Indy 500 field away like he does when he runs his hundreds of local dirt track events per year, these past two years have been a massively rude awakening.
And yeah; when a guy like Larson can't even do it, there is literally no better to way to illustrate just how challenging it truly is.
Further success in the Brickyard 400 on Sunday was just more proof of how challenging it is to run well at Indy in an Indy Car, even for someone with Larson's impressive championship pedigree.