Kyle Larson “didn’t have the confidence” in car during worst qualifying run of the year

Kyle Larson came into Nashville looking to rebound from Memorial Day Weekend where he crashed out of both the Coca-Cola 600 and Indianapolis 500. Unfortunately, things got off to a slow start as he only reached 24th in practice.

That continued in qualifying, placing 28th in the 39-car grid in his worst qualifying effort of the 2025 season. He was also the lowest of all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers in qualifying. His worst start of the year before this was 25th at Talladega, where he fought back to finish second. But of course, that was a superspeedway race. His worst start at a non-drafting track this year was 19th at Darlington, which saw him wreck early in the event as he tried to fight his way forward.

Ahead of the Nahsville race on Sunday, the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion offered some insight into what went wrong.

“Yesterday, I don’t know … I was just kind of loose in and then it was just getting my timing off where the center of the corner was, so it just took all of practice to kind of find a rhythm that fit me and then it was just too late for qualifying,” Larson told NASCAR on Prime.

“I just didn’t really have the confidence (on) where to drive into and what angle and all that. Unfortunately, didn’t qualify where we wanted to. I know our car is much better than 28th. We got time to get to the front. I think you need to be patiently aggressive. I think you need to take advantage of holes and opportunities but you also can’t create your own holes too much and risk getting in a crash or something that will set you back.

“We’ll see. It should be a long, hard-fought day.

The good news for Larson is that a victory from that far back wouldn’t be that surprising, as Joey Logano won last year’s Nashville race from 26th on the grid.