Daytona Beach, FL (93.7 The Fan) -- Chip Ganassi Racing's Kyle Larson is looking forward to Sunday's 61st Daytona 500 as the 2019 NASCAR Season kicks off with it's biggest event, The Great American Race.
"Excited to get back in a stock car, to get our season started and hopefully have a good Daytona 500," said Larson. "That gives us some momentum going into the season."
Larson has never won the race but getting to victory lane at Daytona would be a welcome boost after a winless 2018.
"We didn't get a win last year but we still had a pretty good season," said Larson. "We ran second six times and I feel like half of those I could've won. Still decent. We finished in the same spot in the points as the year previous."
Taking that next step and finding that extra bit of speed is what pushes Larson and company.
"Try and close out races a little better on my end but as a team as well," said Larson on where those gains can be found. "These races are hard to win, so you've got to be perfect and do what we can do to put ourselves in position to win, and then hopefully we can capitalize on those moments."
Every other race team is trying to do the same thing which makes auto racing unique as a sport, you're not facing just one opponent at each event, you're facing 39 in NASCAR.
"In Cup racing the field is really tight," explained Larson. "From first to sometimes 30th might only be three or four tenths (of a second) so it just puts an emphasis on your whole team being perfect. There is not much separation between us so just trying to find any bit of gains and differences that we can from our competitors to make us faster."
Larson gets a new teammate this season to brainstorm with as 2004 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Kurt Busch joins the Ganassi team, climbing into the No. 1 Monster Energy Chevrolet Camaro.
"I'm excited to get to work with Kurt," Larson told KDKA. "He's got a lot of experience, he's a past Champion. It will be nice for me to hopefully lean on him a lot to learn what I can and try and become a better race car driver."
First up for Team Ganassi is Daytona, which is the biggest race of the year, but also the start of the season-long championship battle.
"These are the best drivers, best stock car racers in the world," said Larson. "I think if you want to give yourself a good shot at winning, survival is always the number one thing. But if you look at your season stage points are very important, so if you can position yourself in the top 10 for those stages and get some points, it can mean a lot."
Winning the Daytona 500 or a Cup Championship would mean a lot to Ganassi, but Larson does not want his boss celebrating by body surfing like he did after Scott Dixon won his 5th IndyCar title.
"I don't want to witness that in person, so no he doesn't need to be body surfing around me," said Larson laughing.
