DOVER, Del. -- Kyle Larson made a quick Zoom stop Saturday before he zipped off to his latest sprint car race: the NASCAR star had to say hello to the students at the Urban Youth Racing School.
"It's good to be back racing again in NASCAR," he told the class.
Larson's road back to NASCAR after he was suspended last season for using a slur during an iRacing event can be traced in large part back to his heavy involvement with UYRS. The Philly-based program that creates opportunities in racing for minorities extended an olive branch last year to Larson and a fast friendship was formed with program founders Anthony and Michelle Martin.
In a sport in which minorities are scarce at all levels, the Martins made it their mission to introduce inner-city youngsters, most of them Black, to the motorsports world with the school. The school has served more than 7,500 students from ages 8 to 18 over the past 22 years and teaches all aspects of auto racing, including driving and Black racing history. UYRS uses a science, technology, engineering and math curriculum, and students are quizzed and graded and compete for various year-end awards.
Larson surprised the school last year when he bought it two racing simulators and gave them a test run in September against select students. Chevrolet has since bought the school two more simulators.
"What kind of stuff will you guys work on, today, this year?" Larson asked the class of 15 students.
The 28-year-old Larson impressed the boys and girls with a taste of his schedule that included a dirt late model race Wednesday in Indiana; a sprint car Friday at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pa.; and was back at the same track Saturday. He starts fourth in today's Cup race at Dover International Speedway. He won his last Cup race at Dover in 2019, his last victory before his suspension.
Larson has one win and five top-five finishes this season for Hendrick Motorsports. He told the class the No. 5 Chevrolet team has challenged for another "four or five wins, probably" but hasn't closed the deal.
"It's been fun. We've been fast," he said. "Just based of sheer speed, we've probably been the fastest car each weekend, or most weekends."
Martin Truex Jr. starts on the pole at Dover a week after he took the checkered flag in a dominating drive at Darlington Raceway. Truex -- who has three career wins at Dover -- won for the 30th time in the Cup Series.
Truex could have a few more trophies in his collection had some near-misses at Dover gone his way. The Joe Gibbs Racing star and 2017 Cup champion has been the runner-up finisher in three straight Dover races. He has nine top-10 finishes in his last 10 Dover races.
Truex had at least four wins in a season from 2016 to 2019 before falling to just one last year in his first season with crew chief James Small. Truex signed a contract extension with JGR before the Daytona 500 and said then that the team last season "came up short on a lot of those little key areas and decisions or little mistakes along the way."
Looks like the 19 team has cleaned up those mistakes.
"I think some of it has just been, we're faster this year," Truex said. "A lot of decisions, a lot of the little things where we talked about missing, it's why we ran second and third a lot of last year. Whether it was a pit stop here or there, just not being fast enough here or there, or maybe along the way we caught some bad breaks as well. There was a handful of races we should have won."
