Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Is Kyle Larson Making NASCAR Boring? | Coffee With Kenny
Transcript
- 0:00Happy Monday morning to everybody.
- 0:04I think I'll just sit right here on the couch.
- 0:07That's right where the original coffee with Kenny started.
- 0:13Right there. Coffee with Kenny.
- 0:17It's starting to rain outside pretty good.
- 0:19So that's another reason I just stay on the couch today.
- 0:23All right, 2 controversial subjects today.
- 0:31One is, is Carl Larson making NASCAR boring by dominating?
- 0:47The other one is, is it sad that when people die, that's when we
- 0:58really find out about them? Let's start with, let's just go
- 1:07ahead and start with Kyle Larson.
- 1:09So we start out the year in NASCAR and man, everything's
- 1:15rocking. Everything's looking good.
- 1:17I mean, and, and still right now, right now, it is a fact
- 1:23that TV ratings are soaring. We're looking at the Cup series.
- 1:32I mean, it seems like every single week we're looking at 2.6
- 1:38to sometimes 4 million people watching these races.
- 1:43We just had a race at Talladega that hell, I got my ass handed
- 1:48to me. People were so mad at me.
- 1:52That's another subject right there.
- 1:54I I said, I said Talladega was a great race, minimal Rex and
- 2:00photo finish. And I'm going to tell you what
- 2:03you thought I'd killed some of these people's Mamas.
- 2:06They came after me. I had it really shocked me to my
- 2:11core that I liked the race and there were a group of people
- 2:16that hated me because I said a race was good.
- 2:20It it it really did shock me. But even that race that a
- 2:26handful of people said was no good got over 4 million views.
- 2:32You look at the crowds at Texas, Jeff Gluck, who will call bull
- 2:37in a heartbeat. Jeff Gluck said biggest crowd
- 2:41I've ever seen at Texas in 20 years or more.
- 2:45He didn't say a year. He just said biggest crowd at
- 2:48Texas in a long time. So it's like, OK, TV ratings are
- 2:55rolling, crowds are up. The start of the year, we had
- 3:02incredible finishes. That Daytona 500 going down to
- 3:05back straight away, going into three.
- 3:08I mean, it was incredible. And then we hit a patch.
- 3:14We hit a deal where Kyle Larson started dominating.
- 3:22Kyle Larson goes to Bristol and leads the field checked out Kyle
- 3:28Larson wins and then here we go again for the second race in a
- 3:33row, everybody hated Bristol. You know, there's so much more
- 3:40to say about the subject then Kyle Larson.
- 3:44Yesterday at Kansas City, KS City I thought was a great race.
- 3:49But in the end, in the end, OK, Kyle Larson once again leaves
- 3:56the field, leaves the field course, Christopher Bell starts,
- 4:00you know, running down a little bit at the end, but Kyle Larson
- 4:07dominates. Now.
- 4:09I thought all the restarts, I thought a lot of the racing was
- 4:12insane at Kansas City. I think most of the wrecks were
- 4:17because we were three and if not three, we were four wide.
- 4:21Hell, you look at one of the wrecks where Kyle Busch, I think
- 4:26he's ready 4 right, four wide, every bit of three wide and they
- 4:30can't get off each other. It was exciting.
- 4:35So is in a funny way. Now I'm saying this, Kyle, Kyle
- 4:42Larson might not watch this. I'm thinking he's pretty busy
- 4:47right now. Is Kyle Larson ruining?
- 4:54Is he making the sport boring? Because he just takes off?
- 5:00To me, when you look at other sports, whether it was the New
- 5:05England Patriots, when they dominated, you never notice
- 5:08that. There's always these eras in
- 5:10sports where people dominate. The New England Patriots, Tom
- 5:14Brady. Well, we found out it was Tom
- 5:17Brady because he went down to Tampa and won another Super Bowl
- 5:22with another team and another group of players.
- 5:24Of course he took Gronk, his wide receiver, he took him with
- 5:30him, took one player with him. So it's pretty, it's pretty
- 5:36positive to say that Brady was the game changer, right, Because
- 5:41he he left the New England Patriots, went down to Tampa Bay
- 5:45and and won another Super Bowl. So he must be the game changer.
- 5:52So when you when you look at like the Dodgers right now, they
- 5:57got this Shawnee Otani or whatever his name is, seems to
- 6:03me like people is what or what changes the game sometimes.
- 6:08You know, it's like Kyle Petty said, Kyle Petty said, you know,
- 6:12I used to think it the the Kyle Petty charity ride in memory of
- 6:16Adam. You know, all the money goes to
- 6:19the Victory Junction gang camp. It was Kyle Petty that said Adam
- 6:25Petty said, Dad, why don't we do something like this?
- 6:28Because Adam saw like a Victory Junction gang camp somewhere
- 6:32else. But Kyle Petty said, I used to
- 6:37think this was about motorcycles.
- 6:41He goes, it's not, it's about people.
- 6:45So when we see people change a sport, it's it's not about the
- 6:51racing, it's not about NASCAR, it's a it's about Kyle Larson.
- 6:56It's about a person. Right now, my friends, what
- 7:00you're watching is you're watching Kyle Larson change the
- 7:05sport. Not I think it's fantastic
- 7:09because I'm a competitor. I admire greatness.
- 7:13I admired Michael Jordan jumping what seemed 5 feet in the air.
- 7:19Maybe it was illusion. Did he, did he really jump 5
- 7:22feet in the air? Air Jordan?
- 7:27Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt. You see what I'm saying?
- 7:32Sometimes we try to place blame on an object when really the
- 7:37blame probably goes to Kyle Larson.
- 7:43He's just, he's thinking to show up everybody he's dominating.
- 7:50I think it's something to behold, something to watch.
- 7:55So the little subject here is sometime, what's the cliche?
- 8:02You know, they used to say, don't don't blame the player,
- 8:08blame the game. I disagree with that right now.
- 8:15I just gave you examples of Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, these
- 8:18greats. Every once in a while these
- 8:21greats come along and they change the sport.
- 8:25Right now we are witnessing greatness and I and I'm
- 8:28exhausted too. I'm right there with you.
- 8:30I'm about tired of talking about Kyle Larson.
- 8:33He's so great. He just does things that you're
- 8:37like, it's like every week, sometimes twice a week.
- 8:42He he, he got out of the cup car.
- 8:43Now he's going to Kokomo IN tonight.
- 8:46Kokomo IN neat little dirt track.
- 8:49He's going to he's going to kick their ass.
- 8:51Hey, they better get ready. He's getting ready to serve up
- 8:53another ass whipping. Then he's then he's going to go
- 8:58not 50 miles down the road to start getting ready to qualify
- 9:02for the Indianapolis 500. All right, witness greatness.
- 9:11Witness greatness and understand that he's, he's going to make it
- 9:14a little boring because he, he's, he's that much better than
- 9:18all the other drivers. He is, he's got that.
- 9:23It's like he is. It's like God gave him a gift.
- 9:26He is so in control. OK, I took 9 minutes to talk
- 9:31about greatness. I hope you all won't hate NASCAR
- 9:35because somebody like Kyle Larson is dominating the sport.
- 9:41OK, I just got off the Kyle Petty charity ride and today we
- 9:47are remembering Adam Petty. That smile, Oh my God, that kid,
- 9:55when he smiled, he got it from his daddy.
- 9:58When we ride those motorcycles, Kyle was a wonderful soul.
- 10:02Kyle Petty, I love him so much. He's so good.
- 10:05To me, it seems like Kyle Petty and myself understand each other
- 10:10and Morgan loves my wife for a lot of reasons that I'm not
- 10:18going to talk about here. But my wife and Morgan get along
- 10:20real good. When when Kyle Petty gets on his
- 10:26motorcycle, there's 125 motorcycles and he'll ride back
- 10:31and forth and he'll smile at all of us and he entertains us.
- 10:35He goes, he starts from the first motorcycle rider and he
- 10:38slows up and he gets on his bike and he's like this, the MO teeth
- 10:43and big O teeth, just like Adam. The moral story is this to me,
- 10:50it bothers me a little bit that when, when, when people pass
- 10:55away. Not I'm not, I'm not I'm not
- 10:58particularly talking about Adam here, but I do I do want to
- 11:02remember Adam today. When when people pass away, it
- 11:08gives everybody a chance to calm down and remember that person
- 11:14and then we remember how great they were.