NASCAR champion brings racing series to LVMS dirt track

NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson is one of the sport’s top drivers entering Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The 2021 series champion will also headline another race in Las Vegas, but not at the 1½-mile oval.

Larson is bringing the sprint car racing series he co-owns, High Limit Racing, to the ½-mile dirt track on the LVMS property. The series will take place Thursday and Saturday with racing beginning at 6:30 p.m both nights to open its 2025 season.

It’s the first time a national dirt racing series will race at the LVMS dirt track since 2019.

“I’m also extremely excited to bring the series that I co-own with my brother-in-law (Brad Sweet) to the dirt track with sprint cars,” Larson said. “It’s been a little while since we’ve gotten to race sprint cars there. I’m excited to bring sprint car racing back to the dirt track. All the teams and competitors are excited to get to race and spend time in Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to the whole weekend.”

Larson enters this weekend as the defending winner of the Pennzoil 400. He led 181 laps during his win last March. The green flag for Sunday’s Cup Series race is scheduled for 12:30 p.m.

Larson, an Elk Grove, California, native, isn’t the only big-name Cup Series driver in the field for the races at the dirt track. Christopher Bell, who has won three straight Cup Series events, is also scheduled to participate in both races.

“It’s been fun to see the sport of sprint car racing grow, see our brand within High Limit grow really quickly and then see the health of (dirt track racing) really take off,” Larson said. “A lot of teams are making way more money than they ever have.”

Unlike most of his NASCAR Cup Series competitors, Larson grew up cutting his teeth racing on dirt tracks. He continued to find time to race on dirt tracks across the country even after making the jump to stock car racing full-time in 2012.

Larson and Sweet began High Limits Racing in 2022 to improve the sport of winged sprint car racing and provide teams with greater financial opportunities.

The series went fully national last year with a 60-race schedule and events across the country. There is a season purse of more than $5.8 million this year.

Larson said there was “a lot of skepticism” on his end and all over the sport on how High Limits Racing would co-exist with World of Outlaws, the longtime sprint car racing series. But Larson said he has a lot of confidence the sport can grow with two national series.

“Last year we proved that it can happen, so we look forward to growing, too,” Larson said. “From where we were at in one complete year to where we look to go to the next three to four to five years is pretty unreal.”

Larson and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team are coming off a third-place finish at Phoenix last week. Larson sits 11th in the overall point standings with two top-five finishes in four races.

There are plenty of reasons for Larson to be a favorite Sunday at LVMS. He has three Cup Series wins, 12 top-10s and an average finish of 9.4 in 17 starts at the track.

“It’s just a fun track and one that we, for whatever reason, had had a lot of success at,” Larson said. “Since 2021 and joining Hendrick Motorsports, it’s probably been our best racetrack. We got a few wins and two other second-place finishes in that time, it’s been really good.”

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.