"Him and I were super tiny kids": Kyle Larson fondly remembers racing against Tyler Reddick before NASCAR 

Tyler Reddick recently said that he felt Kyle Larson would make it to the pinnacle of NASCAR. However, when Larson was confronted with Reddick's comments, the #5 driver felt otherwise and also mentioned how the two raced each other in their early days in motorsports.

Last weekend, Reddick won the NASCAR regular season championship by a single point over Kyle Larson. And ahead of the first playoff race of the season, he was asked at Atlanta whether he ever imagined he'd be one of the top racecar drivers in the sport while he was racing against Larson as a youngster. Reddick said (via "Speedway Digest"):

“I mean Kyle (Larson) – definitely when he left the outlaw kart stuff and started running midgets and sprint cars – it was very automatic. I could tell watching from a far that he was going to go wherever he wanted to go," Reddick said.

But discussing the trajectory of his career in NASCAR, Reddick claimed he didn't know if it would work out. The 23XI Racing driver said that he could see the door closing until he got his big break with Ken Schrader.

"I definitely saw Kyle getting here, but I didn’t, at times, think it was going to work out for myself, but thankful it did. It is really cool that two kids that grew up racing at Cycleland Speedway in go karts, all those years ago, are doing that on the Cup side now," Reddick added.

During a media interaction, a journalist mentioned Reddick's comments to Kyle Larson, who remarked that he grew up racing against Reddick, and the #45 driver began when the #5 driver was only 8 years old. Larson said (via "FrontStretch" on X):

"Him and I were super tiny kids, as we still are, just winning a lot, racing together a lot, just travelling on the road together. It’s families and all that so I don’t know if I thought about making it to the Cup Series back then but I think as we got a little bit older and he moved from California at a young age and was running well, I thought that our paths will hopefully meet again someday and get to showcase where we grew up or how we grew up racing together," Larson said [at 00:40].

He further said that racing against Reddick during the early days of their careers was "pretty neat." The 2021 Cup champion highlighted the impact of grassroots-level racing in California, given that he and Reddick were separated by a single point in the regular season championship.

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Kyle Larson isn't a fan of this season's first round of races in the playoffs

In the first round of the playoffs, the schedule has three very different forms of racetracks, with races taking place in Atlanta, Watkins Glen, and Bristol. However, for Kyle Larson, the worrying race is the Atlanta race that kicks off the playoffs. Throughout his career, Larson has struggled at speedway racing, something that is highlighted by the fact that he has yet to notch up a win at such tracks.

And Kyle Larson wasn't thrilled to see Atlanta in the playoff schedule, he said (as per Toby Christie):

“I don’t love seeing Atlanta (Motor Speedway) in the playoffs at all. And even Watkins Glen (International) for that matter, just because – yes, I like those tracks, but they’re just sketchy places. But if they’re going to be in the playoffs, I would rather them be in the first round than the second or third round," Larson said.

Larson further hinted caution as he underlined that bonus points and playoff points accrued throughout the regular season don't guarantee anything and the important thing would be to avoid trouble in the back-to-back races (at Atlanta and Watkins).