Kyle Larson NASCAR’s newest star takes the wheel of the #42 Target Chevrolet

     Kyle Larson’s passion for auto racing goes back farther than he can remember. Literally. “My parents have told me that they brought me to my first race when I was one week old,” Larson says. “They were always into racing as teenagers growing up. We would go to 70, 80 races a year just to watch. That’s what I’ve been around my whole life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
     This year, Larson takes a giant leap for a 21-year-old, as he enters one of the most elite fraternities in professional sports—NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Driver. Taking the wheel of the #42 Target Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing, Larson has already turned heads in the racing world as one of its brightest prospects.
     “I’m blown away by the kid,” says Jeff Gordon, the four-time Sprint Cup Series champion. “I text him when he wins a race. I’m like, ‘I’m getting tired of texting you every week.’ He will win two different divisions in a weekend. The kid is spectacular. I think he’s probably the rawest, most talented race car driver that I know of.”
     After Larson won the 2013 Rookie of the Year in the Nationwide Series, Chip Ganassi thought enough of him to put him behind the wheel of the #42 car for the entire 2014 season. “We believe Kyle is the future of this sport,” Ganassi says “He’s a unique talent. We felt Kyle was the best short term and long term fit for the team and for Target.”
     Having the stability of Ganassi Racing and Target behind him was a big factor for Larson. “Target has been with Chip Ganassi Racing for 25 years,” Larson says. “It’s longest running partnership in NASCAR. That gives you some comfort as a driver, knowing that your sponsor is behind you, behind Chip. They do a lot of fun things with drivers as well. They help us remodel school libraries and give back to the community. It’s cool to see how involved they are with everything.
     Despite Larson’s youth, he certainly doesn’t lack in experience. “Even when I was racing go karts when I was 7, my family would hit all the sprint car races to watch. As I got more into racing, I would race about 100 times a year.”
     Larson’s mom has videotaped every lap Kyle has ever raced. Dad would spend close to $30,000 a year getting the go karts ready for racing. “I’d race everywhere I could,” Larson remembers. “I’d race Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, multiple divisions, different cars. We would run our tires out there for a few weeks. Some guys would change their tires every race. Dad would always get the most out of what we had. He always told me that family funding wouldn’t get us passed go karts. It would have to be talent after that.”
     Talent was always something that Larson showed, even at an early age. He would often go to the track and win every race that weekend. To him, it was all fun. In hindsight, it was what helped him prepare for today. “Looking back, it probably did make me a better driver,” he says. “I’m really fortunate that my dad never put any pressure on me at all. If I ever decided that I didn’t want to race anymore, he would have completely supported me. There wasn’t any pressure on me to win. As a kid, he let me go out and have fun with it.”
     Now, however, the stakes are much higher. Having raced in four Sprint Cup races last year, Larson feels he has a better idea of what to expect this season. “I’m the kind of guy who likes to get as many laps as he can in,” he says. “Just getting a feel for the way the cars race around other cars was a big difference. The aerodynamics are very different. You have to get used to the horsepower. The Sprint Cup cars are so much faster, it made the Nationwide cars feel like slow motion.”
     Larson has been anything but moving in slow motion this season with three Top 5 finishes in Sprint Cup and two victories on the Nationwide Circuit. “The more you’re on the track, the better you get,” he says. “The more seat time you have, the more you get better at all the little things a driver needs to do. I love doing double duty. I’ll do triple duty if I can.”