CNN Grills NASCAR’s Kyle Larson About Winning Championship After Being Fired for Blurting N-Word During Live Video

NASCAR driver Kyle Larson faced intense grilling over his championship win following a near career-ending scandal over his use of the n-word.

Larson was suspended by NASCAR and fired from his racing team in April of 2020 when he blurted out the hard-“R” version of the n-word during a live video stream of an eNASCAR iRacing Pro event.

In the video, Larson told fellow players “You can’t hear me?”, and then blurted out “Hey n***er!” with the hardest of “R”s.

One of the other players advised him “Kyle, you’re talking to everyone, bud,” while the others reacted with astonishment and laughter.

Larson released an apology on Twitter in short order.

The driver was reinstated in October of last year, and just won the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship race. On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, Coy Wire interviewed Larson about the win, and his journey back from disgrace — and was anything but coy.

“You were iRacing and used the N-word to talk to one of your colleagues, and you didn’t realize there was a broader audience listening. You lost your sponsors, got suspended. You said you didn’t know if you’d ever make it back. What kind of mental space were you in during that time?” Wire asked.

“Oh, it was definitely dark, for sure,” Larson replied. “Getting all the hate messages and stuff and knowing that I just embarrassed myself, my family, my friends, your whole community of people. It just was was definitely a dark place.”

“What I found interesting was that you said it was ignorance,” Wire pressed. “You use that word because you didn’t understand truly how hurtful, how negative that word was. And I think a lot of people would want to know more about that because in this day and age, maybe they would say that’s not really a good enough excuse.”

“Well, I mean, I knew it was I knew it was a hurtful word, but surrounding myself there for a short period time with just a little bit of bad influence led to the ignorance,” Larson said, and added that he’s learned a lot form listening to the experiences of Black people.

Ironically, Larson’s win comes on the heels of Bubba Wallace becoming only the second Black driver in NASCAR history to win a cup series event. Wire asked Larson what it was like to talk to Wallace about the n-word incident.

“It was tough. Immediately after the mistake I made, I mean, within a couple of minutes, I had sent him a text apologizing. And finally, I got to talk to him.

“What was his initial response?” Wire asked.

“Just disappointed. You know, that that I would allow myself to make a mistake like that,” Larson said, again referring to his utterance as though he’d poured a pilsner when he’d mean to dispense an IPA.

He concluded by saying he never thought he’d race again, and told Wire “I, you know, embarrassed the sport that I was competing in and made a huge mistake. You know, I was accepting of the fact that, you know, I probably won’t ever race in it again. So just thankful that I did get that second chance and I was able to do good things through it.”

Watch above via CNN.

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