The “Double Duty” challenge — racing in the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day — has humbled almost everyone who‘s tried it. Larson‘s ready to try again.
If at first you don‘t succeed, try to pull off the most ambitious and grueling day in auto racing again — if you‘re Kyle Larson, that is.
On Sunday, Larson will continue what has already been an incredibly hectic month by running the 109th Indianapolis 500, where he‘ll try to build on last year‘s 18th-place finish as an IndyCar rookie. Then, he‘ll hop out of the open-wheel car, get in a helicopter to a private jet departing Indiana for North Carolina — where, upon touching down, he‘ll take another chopper to Charlotte Motor Speedway, a place where he won just a few years ago.
At least, that‘s the plan. A year ago, Larson proved the old saying true: “Man plans, and God laughs.” Arriving in Charlotte from Indy, he was ready to hop in the car and take over for Justin Allgaier (who‘d started the No. 5 in Larson‘s stead) … but the weather refused to cooperate with Larson‘s arrangements, scuttling the rest of the race before he could even run a lap.
This time around could provide similar drama. Though the precipitation forecast for southwestern North Carolina is low to moderate during race hours, there is a higher chance of storms in central Indiana, which means Larson‘s bid at the fabled “double” is still up in the air.
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The weather is only one obstacle that may make Larson‘s feat difficult. Since the World 600 — the precursor to the Coke 600 at Charlotte — came into being in 1960, only 22 attempts (by 14 drivers) have been made to either run in or qualify for both the Indy 500 and the Coke 600 in the same season, including Larson‘s in 2025. (This excludes cases where a regular driver deliberately skipped one of the races.) Of those, only 15 saw the driver actually run in both races — and of those, only nine happened at least partially on the same day, in true double-duty fashion.
As we can see from the chart above, few of the double-duty attempts actually involved completing all or most of the 1,100 total miles. Donnie Allison did it in 1970, but that was when the two races were six days apart — not on the same day. A year later, when they were only a day apart, he completed 1,097.5 of the 1,110 miles. (He ran 199 of 200 laps at Indy.)
In part due to a long period of impossible logistics — the 500 and 600 began overlapping, at the same time on the same day, from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s — it wasn‘t until Tony Stewart in 1999 that a driver came close to running all 1,100 miles in both races again, and he did it on the same day. Then, two years later, he became the first (and to date, only) driver to successfully pull off that feat, while Robby Gordon nearly did it the following year. (He finished 1.5 miles shy after completing 399 of 400 laps in Charlotte.)
The closest anyone has come since was Kurt Busch, who ran 906.5 miles in 2014, including the entire Indy 500, before being forced to retire early from the Coke 600 due to an engine problem. Larson got his own 500 miles in at Indy before the rain spoiled his night in North Carolina.
And all of this is focused on simply finishing the double without incident. Actually doing well in both races is an even tougher component of the challenge. Allison is the only driver to ever score a top five in both the Indy 500 and Coke 600 during the same season, though they weren‘t on the same day. No driver has ever matched that feat while pulling true double-duty, and Stewart is the only one to finish top 10 in both races under those conditions. (Amazingly, he did it twice, in 1999 and 2001.)
Larson will try to change that this weekend — and according to DraftKings, he may have at least some shot. He‘s a +550 favorite to win the nightcap in Charlotte, which works out to about a 10-15% win probability after adjusting for the take, and his +1800 Indy 500 odds are around 4 or 4.5%. Roughly assuming independence for those two probabilities, that works out to about a 1-in-150 chance (at best) that Larson would win both races. Those odds are long, to be sure … but if we think about it a different way, Larson has a better shot at sweeping both races than some drivers in either field have of winning just one.
And regardless of how it pans out, maybe the most fascinating thing about Larson‘s bid is what it represents. Early in the period after it became possible again in the 1990s, trying the double was the domain of drivers with an open-wheel, IndyCar-style background. John Andretti and Gordon had 75 or more previous career starts in either IndyCar, ChampCar or CART at the time of their first attempt, while Davy Jones and Stewart both at least had more open-wheel races than Cup Series starts. The logic behind this was simple — the steep learning curve at Indy was best handled by drivers with open-wheel experience who had only recently moved to Cup.
Busch blew that up in 2014, when he ran double-duty after 482 previous starts in Cup — and zero in IndyCar. And Larson is continuing that trend these past two years: Despite his reputation as possibly the world‘s most versatile driver, he had never actually run an IndyCar race before the 2024 Indianapolis 500. Instead of shying away from that inexperience, though, he‘s leaning into his talent and trusting his ability to drive anything, anytime, any place.
What was once the domain of open-wheel experts is now being redefined by elite all-around drivers who see no reason to just stay in their lane — especially if they‘re as adaptable as Larson. Maybe the fates will let him have his shot this year, for the sake of racing fans everywhere, or maybe they‘ll conspire to ruin his double-duty plans again anyway. But when you‘re as good as Larson is, there will always be another chance to try again in the future, too, as long as he wants it.