"It’s just a tough place": Kyle Larson carrying confidence and pragmatism into key playoff race at Martinsville

Heading into Martinsville, Kyle Larson finds himself in fifth place in the standings, -7 with just one race left in the playoffs. Larson, while not in a must-win position to make the Championship 4 (unlike his HMS teammate Chase Elliott), could still end up in tricky waters if certain things don't fall his way.

However, the 2021 Cup champion is heading into the short track with a lot of confidence. In fact, Larson has claimed that he's carrying more confidence into Martinsville than he had five years ago.

"Being this close to the cutoff, I feel like since joining Hendrick, it’s actually been one of my better tracks. Maybe not from points scored, but finish-wise, we’ve won, we’ve finished second a couple of times, maybe, finished in the top five, one or two other times. So, yeah, I have confidence going there," Larson described via TobyChristie.com)."

“I think we’ll have a good car, a great car, and we’ll have a good shot, but it’s just a tough place. And it’s not a place that’s ever really been comfortable for me, even with the success that we’ve had. It’s a tough, really tough track for me," Larson added.

The HMS star also acknowledged that drivers like Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, and his teammates Chase Elliott and William Byron have shown 'dominating speed' at Martinsville. And interestingly, it is those drivers who he's going to race against to earn a place in the Final 4 at Phoenix.

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Kevin Harvick weighs in on Kyle Larson's HMS teammate getting tired of the ongoing narratives

While Kyle Larson is still looking at the prospect of pointing his way to Phoenix from fifth place, his teammate Chase Elliott, eighth on the table, is facing a must-win race. Because of this, Kevin Harvick wondered if NASCAR's most popular driver is 'getting tired' of a certain narrative in the media.

Harvick claimed on his podcast that Elliott is 'getting tired' of the talk surrounding everyone being aggressive, which has taken him to a point where he wants to show everyone that he too can push his rivals around and do what he needs to do.

The former SHR driver further claimed that Chase Elliott is also getting tired of having Kyle Larson's name in his ears as he said:

"I think he's getting tired of hearing about Kyle Larson and everybody else around him and just knowing that NextGen mentality that you have to have with that over-aggressive attitude, I feel like after watching Homestead that he has that ability," Kevin Harvick added.

With that said, it'll be interesting to see how the Martinsville race plays out for both Larson and Elliott. There is a possibility that both the HMS drivers make it to Phoenix.

But then again, there could be a scenario in which neither of them does.