Where the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship was concerned, Sunday's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway was merely a formality. All Kyle Larson had to do was score eight points, which he locked up in the first stage alone.
Larson became the 11th driver in NASCAR history to earn at least three Cup titles. He's the first back-to-back champion since Jimmie Johnson, and he's done it in two different formats. Without a doubt, he's the greatest driver of his generation.
The only question now is where Larson racks up among the all-time greats.
Kyle Larson is now firmly in top 10 all-time talks, and he's still far from finished
Richard Petty. Dale Earnhardt. Jimmie Johnson. Jeff Gordon. David Pearson. Probably Kyle Busch. Aside from them, is there anyone else in NASCAR history you can say built a definitively greater legacy than Larson?
He has as many titles as anyone not on that list, and his 35 career wins significantly undersell his talent. Larson drove for a second-tier Chip Ganassi Racing team for his first six seasons, and in the Next Gen era, no driver has ever won more than six races in a year.
Though Larson will likely never top the dominance of his 10-win 2021 campaign, his most recent championship run was perhaps his most impressive yet. In a down year for Hendrick Motorsports, he put his team on his back time after time in a stretch of 10 weeks that brought back memories of Tony Stewart's Herculean effort in 2011.
Larson has shown throughout his career that when he is on his game, he can do things only matched by very few others to ever strap on a helmet. And at 34 years old, he still has at least another half-decade of peak performance ahead of him.
It's a high likelihood that Larson will finish his career with at least 50 wins and potentially some more championship hardware, all in an era in which it's never been more difficult to consistently stay a level above the competition. Unless he unexpectedly encounters a dramatic dropoff, he is going to be in talks with the very best to ever do it.
As a pure talent, Larson is as impressive as they've ever come. And given what he cemented on Sunday, anything he accomplishes from here is just a bonus when it comes to his all-time status. There is nothing left to prove other than to keep compiling numbers.
Larson is a three-time champion. He's won two which, under the rules NASCAR fans have created, can't be disputed because he scored the most points all year. Now he's won one that didn't simply come down to good fortune in one race. He has the greatest individual season of anyone this century and he has the most sustained success of anyone in his era.
How many drivers have ever been better? There are not very many.
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