Let me preface this by stating that, yes, Kyle Larson is a fantastic driver.
He’s one of the best to race in NASCAR today. He’s almost certainly the best driver on dirt today. He qualified in the Fast 6 at Indianapolis just a few months ago.
But you can’t say he’s better than Max Verstappen.
This debate began again when Larson spoke to FloRacing following his win in the Knoxville Nationals earlier this month.
“‘There’s no way (Verstappen) can get into a Sprint Car and win the Knoxville Nationals. There’s no way he can go win the Chili Bowl. There’s no way he can go win a Cup race at Bristol,’ Larson continued. ‘There’s probably no way I can go win a Formula 1 race at Monaco, but I think I’d have a better shot at him (doing what he does than him doing what I do) just because of the car element.
‘That’s what gives me ease and confidence that, like, I know I’m better than him. Maybe not in an open-wheel IndyCar or Formula 1 car, but that’s one discipline. I think I would beat him in everything else. You can quote that.’”
This is a very fair statement. And I absolutely believe that Larson believes he could beat him everywhere. Larson is a racing driver, an athlete. The best of them think they are the best in the world, regardless of series. If they didn’t, they would not have gotten to where they are.
Racing is such a mental sport that you must have that mindset to succeed. And even among the mere mortals partaking in it, I guarantee almost every single one racing this coming weekend, regardless of series, thinks they could win if they were in the right car.
Last year, I wrote about Shane van Gisbergen’s win in his very first NASCAR race, one in which the “greatest driver in the world,” Larson, was left flabbergasted at how few in the NASCAR knew that he was such a fast driver. It included this bit that still rings incredibly true:
“The reality is there is no best driver in the world. It’s foolish to seriously argue there is one. It’s not the days of the 1960s, when guys like AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti and Dan Gurney dominated in anything into which they strapped themselves.
“The world is much more specialized now, with the vast majority of major series drivers only focusing on their given series as a full-time job instead of ride hopping, save for maybe some endurance or dirt racing on the side.”
Drivers can think they are the greatest, and that’s fine. But then I see dumb arguments on both sides of this inherently flawed debate that people take as life and death, and it’s just hilarious.
There’s Kevin Harvick, actively claiming that Larson could beat Verstappen after a few days in a modern F1 car. There are plenty of F1 pundits who have argued the opposite with Verstappen in a stock car.
You have to think about this from Verstappen’s perspective.
The reality is that F1 is the biggest race series worldwide—70.3 million people, on average, watched every single race of the 2021 season. Cup had an average of 2.86 million last year in the United States, and I’ll be very charitable and spot them another million globally.
It is incredibly stupid to seriously argue that Larson is the greatest driver in the world. Verstappen will never step down from being the dominant champion of the largest series in the world to race in a much smaller American-based series for us even to find out.
And that’s not even taking into account dirt racing, which has no television presence whatsoever in an era of 200 cable channels fueled by syndicated COPS marathons. The F1 pundits I mentioned above who think Verstappen would beat Larson don’t even factor that discipline in because they don’t recognize it.
By this model, Cleetus McFarland is the greatest driver in the world because Larson doesn’t have the guts to show up at the Freedom Factory, and Verstappen doesn’t know who he is.
Granted, it’s also not fair to seriously argue that Verstappen is the greatest driver in the world because of how extensively exclusive F1 has become in recent seasons. The super license system and distribution of points essentially prevents many international talents, Larson included, from entering the series, even for a one-off.
Their best avenue would be to waste at least one season in Formula 2, which costs a lot of money to run. And that doesn’t guarantee anything. Just ask Ritomo Miyata about his mess of an F2 season.
It also needs to be stressed beyond everything that Verstappen, in reality, does not care about this debate.
Hell, Fernando Alonso seems to care more about this argument than Verstappen.
This argument, which has been going on for multiple years, almost entirely on the American side of the world, is legitimately sad and pretty silly. Was there ever anybody who seriously argued Jeff Gordon was a better driver than Michael Schumacher or Jimmie Johnson over Lewis Hamilton? No, because it’s always been two entirely different forms of racing.
What we do know about drivers who make major switches like that, however, is that typically, the single-seater driver, like Juan Pablo Montoya, transitions better while the stock car driver, like Johnson, struggles.
“But but Larson was fast in the Indianapolis 500!” Johnson was also fast on ovals in IndyCar. The driver, who was a solid 18th place in Cup points in 2020, went over to IndyCar road courses the next year and became a weekly caution. The gap between Johnson and Larson, even back then, wasn’t more than the gap between Johnson and the IndyCar top 10.
It’s fine for either Larson or Verstappen to think they are the better driver. But it’s just so dull to try and debate it. The last two paragraphs are more about trying to knock some sense into the Larson crowd on this subject.
A debate about who the greatest driver in the world is in 2024 is an exercise of driving in circles. Nothing you can say to either side of the issue will get them to change their mind, and it is impossible to answer the question because it just is and is fodder for vlogs, blogs, and podcast chatter.
Besides, anybody who knows racing will know Scott McLaughlin is actually the best in the world.
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.