Larson looking forward to racing Raikkonen at Watkins Glen

Kyle Larson attended last year’s Formula One season finale anticipating a behind-the-scenes look at the so-called best drivers in the world. Little did he know he’d soon be racing against a world champion.

NASCAR has a record seven different countries represented on the entry list for Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen International, and the headliner is 2007 F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn ran two lower-level NASCAR races in 2011 during his one-year break from F1 but he never got a chance to enter the top Cup Series.

Now retired, Raikkonen will make his Cup debut on the Watkins Glen road course driving for TrackHouse Racing and its Project91 program designed to raise NASCAR’s international exposure. The Cup Series has raced four times so far on road courses, and TrackHouse drivers Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez have won on two of the circuits.

“Kimi being in a really good car should be able to adapt very well,” Larson said. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get to race against somebody like that who has strictly just basically road raced his whole life. I don’t know if there’s a Formula One Hall of Fame, but he’d probably be in someday.

“But I guess just to see how you stack up against like that. I know it’s a totally different race car, but his experience level is way more than mine on road courses. So just to see how you stack up and look at his data and see the kinds of things that a guy like that with an open-wheel background does differently behind the wheel. I think studying that stuff can make you become a better race car driver in the future.”