Next May, Kyle Larson will become the first driver since 2014 to compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. On Sunday, IndyCar partner Arrow McLaren and NASCAR partner Hendrick Motorsports revealed Larson’s matching cars for the race.
As expected, both entries are sponsored by Larson’s primary NASCAR sponsor, Rick Hendrick’s HendrickCars.com. While the liveries are somewhat similar to what Hendrick and McLaren would run on an average weekend, they add aggressive splashes of the other team’s signature color to create a matching pair. On the McLaren, that means wings and side pods in the NASCAR entry’s blue. On the stock car, shocks of McLaren’s signature papaya orange stand out on the nose, number outline, side skirts, and final pillar.
While a NASCAR driver at McLaren may seem strange, the extra entry from the legendary F1 outfit’s three-car IndyCar program was a major target for both Larson and NASCAR rival Kyle Busch dating back to 2022. Both are Chevrolet-affiliated drivers in NASCAR, leaving few opportunities for a one-off with a team capable of fielding a competitive Chevrolet-powered car in the race. McLaren’s interest in running the parallel program with Hendrick made the team a natural fit for Larson, who officially got the ride in January and has been preparing for the opportunity in the background ever since.
Larson will become the sixth driver to attempt both races in the same year, a tradition dating back to John Andretti’s “Double” attempt in 1994. That equally impressive, taxing, and poorly-named one-day challenge is an odd tradition in modern NASCAR, where the series expects drivers to compete in every race of a season regardless of whether or not they participate in a bigger race earlier that day. Only one driver, Tony Stewart, has ever finished both races on the lead lap. Kurt Busch, a one-time NASCAR champion like Larson and the last driver to attempt the feat, finished an impressive sixth at the 500 in 2014 before retiring from the 600-miler with a blown engine on lap 274.
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