"We've turned things around": Kyle Larson paints an optimistic picture for his playoff campaign

Kyle Larson has commented on the state of his team entering the playoffs. In the 2025 regular season, he won three races and had eight top-5 finishes.

However, all three of those wins came in a span of seven races, with Larson's most recent one being at Kansas back in May. Since then, he has only managed three top 5s. It's worth mentioning as well that in the last six races of the regular season, he had a run of inconsistent results with two back-to-back top 5s, followed by two finishes outside the top 20, followed by two top 10s.

During a recent interview with the Teardown podcast ahead of Darlington, Jeff Gluck mentioned to Larson that he's having 'a hard time getting a read' on the #5 team's state heading into the playoffs.

Larson deemed that observation a fair one, something he also thought about at times. He elaborated:

"Sometimes, I get kind of lost on where we might actually be as well. We were really, really fast and then it's like kind of plummeted some races we were slow and then some races we were fast but had some misfortune along the way.

"But I feel like here lately, we've turned things around. I do believe that our team is much stronger than we were even when we were winning. I believe just on the stuff of just being battle tested in the garage area, fixing things or trying to dig and make your car better. I just think we're much tougher and well prepared for the playoffs because of the dip in our season throughout the summer."

Having said that, Kyle Larson added that the #5 team put together a 'pretty solid' end to the regular season despite being involved in some wrecks. He claimed they're inching toward being more consistent and being closer to the lead again.

Kyle Larson wants to get back in his groove for the playoffs

During their interaction with Kyle Larson, the Teardown co-host Jordan Bianchi stated that the HMS driver has tied for the most top 5s this year. Bianchi further added that Larson has the most top 10s, and he ranked second in most laps led.

Bianchi claimed that Kyle Larson wasn't where 'the level everybody thinks' he's at, but he wasn't far from it and was more consistent. Larson mentioned that everyone holds the #5 team to a high standard, and they get judged differently from other teams, which is 'something to be proud of.'

However, Larson also remarked that all of his stats that Bianchi mentioned are from the first half of the season.

"I would definitely love to get, you know, some more laps led again and get better at getting stage points. That's where we've really, I feel like, tapered. We don't have many stage points the last half of the regular season. Finally got a stage win at Daytona. And we had one at Talladega earlier this year, too," he described.

With that said, Kyle Larson hoped that he had more stage wins, as he added that he was in a good spot and ready for the playoffs.