Kyle Larson stood by Chase Elliott’s win at the NASCAR Cup Championship a year ago and ruminated on what went wrong. Earlier in the year, Larson’s promising Cup career had been derailed, perhaps permanently. He was suspended by NASCAR for using a racial slur during an electronic racing event. It cost Chip Ganassi Racing his sponsorships.
Larson took home the NASCAR Cup Championship today.
Larson does not fit the stereotype of NASCAR that is held by people who don’t know much about it, except the above cliches. Half-Japanese, he is. His maternal grandparents were interned in a camp during World War Two. Elk Grove is a California suburb that includes Sacramento. He was raised there. In Northern California, he began his career in open-wheel dirt track racing.
Larson, a NASCAR driver, won the Rookie Of The Year award in NASCAR’s then-Nationwide Xfinity Series in 2013 and then went on to win the Sprint Cup ROY award for 2014. Before he was suspended in 2020, Larson was on everyone’s dance card as a driver to watch, a potential future champion. He has now fulfilled his promise.
Larson’s return is a mark of something most liberals can neither understand nor accept, that being the concept of grace. The idea of forgiving others is anathema if you’re utterly, insufferably sure of your righteousness.
Leftist culture considers uttering any racial slur to be the final sin. Anyone who violates this rule must be immediately and permanently barred from all and every societal participation. In their constant effort to prove moral superiority, or at least to claim it, the woke mob of cancel culture cretins will always be on the lookout for people to devour.
Much ado was made last year of Bubba Wallace and the Talladega noose in the garage that wasn’t a noose incident. Was there enough attention to Wallace’s statement, which he said without apologizing Larson that he had forgiven him and others?
— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) April 16, 2020
Larson didn’t complain and took the time to listen. His work paid off when, not only was he reinstated by NASCAR, doubtless after running him through the wringer to let everyone know they were serious, he was picked up by NASCAR’s leading team owner Rick Hendrick for one of his four cars, Hendrick underwriting the car himself, as sponsors were still understandably gun-shy. Larson finished 10 out of 36 races to win the Cup championship. He also won today’s race at Phoenix.
Racial epithets are not acceptable. It is not wrong to extend forgiveness and friendship for the truly penitent. Larson was able to get out of the hole in which he fell. He became a person who was not a cliché but who brought about personal and professional growth that sports have rarely seen.
Coincidence? Perhaps. Consider the possibility. Kyle Larson, in his quest to become a better person and driver, has rediscovered the potential to fly.
This video was taken right after he won today.
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