Jeff Gordon Convinced Rick Hendrick to Accept Kyle Larson’s Only Demand Before Joining HMS

In the early months of the 2020 Cup Series season, Kyle Larson made a mistake that not many drivers get to come back from. He uttered a racial slur during an iRacing event and was suspended by NASCAR for it. His team, Chip Ganassi Racing, fired him as well. Six months later, he was reinstated into the sport, and he signed a deal that made him a driver for Hendrick Motorsports but not without intervention from Jeff Gordon. 

What Hendrick Motorsports made in that climate was a gamble, but a well-calculated one. Larson was a talented race car driver and neither Rick Hendrick nor Gordon wanted to miss out on the opportunity to bring a championship-quality driver into their roster, but the previously disgraced driver had a demand. 

Larson wanted to continue racing sprint cars. Given the situation, he was in no position to make hard demands, but he expressed his desire with the mindset to accept whatever the ultimate decision from them may be. Hendrick Motorsports had a strict policy that its drivers should not participate in events outside NASCAR. This presented a hiccup in the situation and Gordon had to play a part in sorting this mess out.

On the Harvick Happy Hour podcast, Gordon stated that the first talk that he had with Larson had been at the bus lot in Daytona in February 2020. It was then that Larson made it clear that he had to compete in sprint cars. 

Gordon continued, “I remember even after that conversation coming back to Rick and saying, ‘You know, if Larson’s an option, I think racing sprint cars is going to be pretty big to him.’ Rick was open to it. He supports a group that helps them thrive at their job, and if there’s an idea that somebody has… Yeah, he doesn’t love seeing them flip. He’s investing in their future.”

But if the same venture is something that made the driver really happy and improved his performance on Sunday, Hendrick would be the first to jump on board, he explained. Well, racing sprint cars made Larson really happy, and he won the 2021 Cup Series championship. So, there has never been any question of whether Hendrick made the right decision.

Even Larson’s expectation when he put the idea forward was to get rejected. The team had never allowed such a concession to a driver before. He said, “Jeff jumped right in. He was like, ‘No, you know, we’re kind of changing how we’ve been in the past, and we’re open to it.’ And they’ve never said no to a race that I’ve wanted to run since then, which is pretty incredible.”

Larson reinforced the confidence they have in him by winning the 2025 Cup Series championship as well. He is now the star driver of the team and fully fired up to defend his title in 2026, all the while racing sprint cars on the side.