Tony Stewart has weighed in on the season-long debate about who the best driver in the world is right now. NASCAR and the world of Formula 1.

NASCAR fans believe it’s Kyle Larson, Formula 1 fans root for Max Verstappen, and the rest of the motorsports world likes to join in the debate. Stewart is in a unique position to provide his answer.

While it’s clear he respects both wheelmen, he made some compelling points in his statement, claiming Larson is a once-in-a-generation talent.

“I know this was a big debate, and I was standing back and watching,” Stewart began. last part Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. Honestly, I’m a huge Kyle Larson fan. I love what he did in the sprint car. I watched him run his first dirt Late Model races and he had success there. Now I’m going to Indy, I’m really excited for him to go to Indy and I’m really excited for him to get the opportunity to come back. I appreciate this very much. I think people need to look at this from multiple perspectives. You know, I totally agree with you. I think Kyle Larson, you can pick him up and drop him in any race car and he’ll get up to speed pretty quickly and figure it out pretty quickly. I also remember taking Juan Montoya to Eldora Speedway and putting him inside a dirty Late Model he had never seen before. He had never raced on clay before. I literally had to show him how to drive the car to get to the race track because there are low and high speed gears and how to do that is a little different than normal stick shift driving. He finished third on the board in his third lap around the racetrack.

“It’s like there’s a man here who’s never seen anything like this. Can you take Max Verstappen, put him in a Cup car and be competitive? I think you can. I don’t know how long it will take, but you can do it. Can you pick him up and put him in the wing speeder? I believe yes because I remember we made a deal with Gene Haas. We brought F1 driver Kevin Magnussen to the dirt track in North Carolina and put him in a 360 wing sprint car, and by the end of the night he was two-tenths of a second clear of me. And that was in the four runs he made. All of these guys, I think all race car drivers, once you get to the pro level, and we’ve both seen it enough, I mean, there are drivers in the Cup Series that probably don’t belong in the Cup Series after all. due to credentials. They got there for different reasons and in different ways. But there are drivers that you can take from the Cup Series, Formula 1, IndyCar, NHRA and put them in cars and they will figure it out because they are pure race car drivers. That’s what Kyle Larson is.

“It’s fun to watch him in any race car. I don’t care if it’s a go kart, a Cup car, a Sprint car, an IndyCar. I love watching him drive a race car. He polarizes people with what he can do behind the wheel. And you know, you and I have been around motorsports for a long time, “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of guy. It seems like in every generation there’s one guy that stands out from the rest, and that’s Kyle.”

Maybe one day we’ll see Kyle Larson and Max Verstappen settle the debate, competing against each other in various environments to find out who’s the best. Until then, we have to listen to the words of legends like Tony Stewart.