Bob Pockrass
Fox Motorsports Insider
Kyle Larson a little woke things up by saying that she wanted to embarrass the Xfinity series pilots when she runs against them.
And it is not because he is happy to crush the competition. They really move to show the difference between cup races and the Xfinity series. And hey, to try young and promising drivers how far they are compared to where they want to go.
Larson has a point. And it is a choir that Kevin Harvick has been singing for years.
Kyle Larson makes a statement after the cup and gain of Xfinity in Bristol: “I want to embarrass Nascar!”
The pilots enter the Copa races without sufficient experience with the pilots of the racing cup. Therefore, they do not know how cut they must be and how to compete for the victory against the toughest competition.
“Children probably think they are in a good place, and they don’t know where the bar really is,” Larson said. “So I like to run those Xfinity races and get potential customers of 10 seconds to allow them to have a lot of space to improve, and I think that is better for our sport.”
Ty Gibbs is the last to learn. He won 21 percent of his Xfinity races before his rookie cup in 2023. And he is still seeing his first victory in the Cup.
Cup pilots with more than three years of full -time cup experience are limited to five races per year in the XFinity series and in the truck series. They cannot compete in the last eight races of the final of the regular season and the playoffs.
Nascar has a limited participation of the Cup so that Xfinity drivers have better chances of winning. This helps to boost their profiles in the eyes of the owners of the Cup and the eyes of sponsor executives, both those of the series and the potentials in the cup.
So what is the answer?
First, it is the same as many have advocated in the cup. It is called practice.
The additional practice in Xfinity and Trucks would allow young drivers to feel more comfortable with the track that weekend. They are more around, and there is no substitution for that reason when it comes to growth and learning. Younger drivers would leave more than practice and get more profits every weekend and during the course of the year.
Nascar could also get rid of the five -run limit and simply keep the final rule of eight races. It makes sense not to have cup drivers in the Xfinity and Truck playoffs. How many pilots would more than five races run anyway? Only a few more likely.
Could Nascar create a potentiax form give a more racing cup driver, if combined in a full -time car with a non -compound driver (or two drivers) to attract dollars? Would a sponsor pay both additional races of the pilots of the Cup and then add enough for a new pilot to complete for many of the removal races?
It would be likely to be difficult to manage and apply, but there could be some way to encourage teams to form young pilots matching this with more races for a cup pilot.
The most important question is whether the drivers of the Cup would dominate.
Let’s return from 20 to 30 years when a series of cup drivers ran in the series. They often had their tuned engines for a little more power, and ran more the risk of blowing the engine because they are running by points. Doing that would now be more difficult, considering the engine rules and the strictest parameters.
This conversation about the drivers of the Cup in the other series is not new. It is a topic in sport for 20 years or more. And Nascar has achieved its goal of giving Xfinity and truck drivers plus notoriety, since they can win more races, since the Cup pilots have limited access to those series.
But it would not be a bad thing to evaluate the policy and see if some adjustments should go to their policy of limiting the drivers of the Cup in the development competition. The fact that the series needs a new rights sponsor for 2026 also makes it a perfect time to visit this again. In this way, any change can be made at the same time that a new sponsor enters the fray.
If Nascar changes it, Larson needs to run more races. Due to his comments, every time he runs in the series, he will have a goal in it. The drivers will want to avoid shame, but they will also try to embarrass it, if they can.
Bob Pockrass covers Nascar and Indycar for Fox Sports. Decades have passed engine sports, including more than 30 Daytona 500s, with periods in ESPN, Sporting News, Nascar Scene Magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow it on Twitter @Bobpock.
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