Veteran NASCAR play-by-play TV announcer Mike Joy thinks we’re all watching one of the best in Kyle Larson, who has the potential to be amongst the very best.
The comments were made to Kevin Harvick on his Happy Hour show as part of a broader conversation about NASCAR and stars in the modern era.
Larson right now has 31 Cup wins in 13 seasons, and while that doesn’t look impressive compared to greats from previous eras, Larson has also enjoyed most of his success in the era with the absolute most parity every — including a spec car.
So where does Joy think Larson ranks right now?
“Certainly Top 10. Possibly Top Five,” said Joy, regarding where he eventually lands. “It’s very, very hard, of course, to compare eras. We have no idea how David Pearson would do in this car today, or Richard Petty, or even Jeff Gordon. We don’t know, we’ll never know. We have no idea how you (Kevin Harvick) might’ve done in one of those cars in the 70s and 80s, before power steering or even before front-steered cars — before Bobby Allison made the front-steered car a thing. Everybody was driving rear-steered banjo cars. Essentially, they were all racing ’63 Ford Galaxies, with different sheet-metal on them, because that was the underpinnings, and maybe a different e”ngine. So, we’ll never really know.
“The other thing is, sometimes you get a driver that’s so dominant that the success of other drivers pales in comparison. I was looking at your stats the other day, and not just all of the races you’ve won, but all the top fives, all the laps led, all of everything and I’m going, ‘When Kevin was racing, how did we not make a bigger deal out of this? Oh yeah, Jimmie Johnson was winning five championships in a row,’ and everything else was well down the list in comparison. So, we celebrate it now. Sorry if we didn’t celebrate it all that much then.”
