Larson double quest exemplifies NASCAR, IndyCar cooperation

Please excuse Kyle Larson if he looks a bit distracted this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. No, his mind won’t be occupied with his upcoming run at a second NASCAR Cup Series title, with the postseason only weeks away. No, it won’t even be occupied with concern over how his teammates will recover from last week’s debacle in Michigan.

During the Saturday-Sunday IndyCar-NASCAR doubleheader, if we catch Larson dreamily staring off into the skies of Speedway, Indiana, like Luke Skywalker looking toward the sunset, it’s because he is already thinking about the next time he will be at Indy with a helmet in hand. He will be there to make his long-sought first start in the Indianapolis 500 … all while commuting back and forth to his stock car day job in Charlotte.

“Of course, I am excited, so excited,” the 31-year-old said. “But ever since we announced that I would be doing to the Indy-Charlotte double back in January, I have also been constantly thinking about the logistics of it, how we are going to pull it off. Especially when I am in Indianapolis, and that’s been a lot.”

Anyone who has had their eyes open over the past eight months knows that. He’s popped into town a couple of times for seat fittings and meetings with Arrow McLaren, the team that will field his 2024 Indy 500 ride. And amid the hundreds of thousands who packed the Brickyard over Memorial Day weekend, Larson was spotted strolling Gasoline Alley, the pit lane and, perhaps most importantly, the roads around the Speedway and the helipads located in and around the Racing Capital of the World.

“We are here just to check it all out, because as a racing fan I have always wanted to see this, I’ve just been a little busy racing somewhere else,” Larson explained, laughing, on Sunday morning, May 30, sneakily working his way through the race-day crowds. “But really, this is about getting a feel for this place today. What are the crowds like? What are the roads like? How amped up am I going to be and how am I going to navigate getting out of here? We don’t want any surprises a year from now. At least not that we can avoid.”

Soon after that conversation, Larson ran a de facto dress rehearsal. He bolted via golf cart to that helipad, where a chopper carried him to the Indianapolis airport, where a plane flew him to Concord, North Carolina, where an SUV took him to Charlotte Motor Speedway, where he ran up front in that night’s Coca-Cola 600 before spinning off a restart, wrecking and finished 30th.

Of course, the real deal in May 2024 will feel much different than that. And there will most definitely be surprises. Any of the other five drivers who have taken their swings at the double could tell Larson about that.

John Andretti, who died in 2020, was the first to pull it off way back in 1994, when Larson was not yet 2 years…