CYNTHIA HILL is a sucker for a good story, and she’s not afraid to let you know that.
The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker has dedicated her career to taking stories traditionally oversimplified or underexplained and bringing light to their intricacies and truths. In her latest project, Hill has done exactly that again.
Hill is the Director and Producer on Kyle Larson Vs The Double, a new film-length docuseries from Prime Video that follows NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson through his attempts at running “The Double” in 2024 and 2025 — competing in both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 in the same afternoon.
JosephSrigley.com spoke with Cynthia Hill in the lead-up to the release of the documentary to discuss its creation and provide some behind-the-scenes details about Larson, his attempt at The Double, and the experience itself.
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Growing up in rural North Carolina, NASCAR wasn’t foreign to Hill. Her grandfather was a huge fan of Richard Petty, so, whether she liked it or not, the sport was prominently displayed on the television every Sunday. In 2017, Hill took on the role of Director in a docuseries following the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series lineup of Hendrick Motorsports — giving NASCAR a permanent place in her portfolio.
This time around, the story primarily focuses on the journey of one person, Kyle Larson, as he takes on a challenge that just a handful of people in the world have attempted before. Hill admits she was “very green” about the concept of The Double before doing some research, where she “quickly found out how big of a deal it was” and the immensity behind it.
“With any film I am telling [a story], you have the overarching kind of narrative, like, we’re going to attempt The Double, but it’s what happens underneath the surface, that’s what is more interesting to me,” Hill said. “It’s like, what is the emotional journey this character is on? What is happening to the people around him? What does it take to accomplish something like this? And what does it cost?”
“[Kyle], and a lot of people, invested a lot of dollars, time, and energy, but he put a lot on the line to try this, and his family was having to make sacrifices to allow him to do this too, and so there are costs to this.”
It’s clearly stated in the documentary that Larson’s attempts at The Double (both of them) went pretty poorly. In 2024, Mother Nature delayed the start of the Indianapolis 500, and by the time the race in Indianapolis was done (he sped and cost himself a top-10) and Larson arrived in Charlotte, the Coca-Cola 600 was prematurely ended.
After the end of the first attempt, Hill was prepared to put a film together, based on the footage they’d already gathered – not knowing if Hendrick Motorsports would pick up the option to run it back in 2025. But, as the story goes, Larson (and thus, the filmmakers) got the chance to do it again, which Hill says her team entered with a lot of gusto and more story to tell.
Of course, the second time didn’t go much better. Mother Nature still played a role, but that was later mitigated by the fact that Larson wrecked in the Indianapolis 500 and then again in the Coca-Cola 600, making him the first driver to crash out of both races in The Double.
“I’m a [cinéma vérité] filmmaker, and so I am in it for whatever is thrown my way, and I want to document what is in front of me,” Hill said. “Typically, life is way more interesting than what you think it’s going to be, and so this was no different. If he had won one or both of the races, would it be an amazing film? Hell yeah, it would be a great film, but I think also, watching him go through this disappointment two years in a row, one Mother Nature and the other one, not so much Mother Nature, I think was important to show, and it’s super dramatic, and it’s real.”
“I think, something that you don’t typically get in a sports documentary is like the reality of what it’s like, the warts and all, and I really give Kyle a lot of credit for trusting us with that and never backing away from the moments that are unpolished, and that typically are not seen.”
This documentary wasn’t just about Kyle Larson, though. Yes, that was the widespread focus, and the tagline, of course, but Hill says she worked hard to ensure that elements of Larson’s story were worked into the documentary through a series of flashbacks and tangents. That includes what Katelyn Larson refers to as Kyle’s mistake — the use of a racial slur during an iRacing session that left him fired from Chip Ganassi Racing, suspended by NASCAR, and not knowing if his reputation would improve enough for him to return.
That particular moment, as messy as it might have been, wasn’t something that Hill felt could be ignored.
“I felt like it was something we couldn’t ignore, and it’s part of his story. If this had only been pure documenting of this event, it could be said that it would be okay to ignore or leave out certain parts of his narrative. But, we did weave in his story like a traditional biopic would, and we could not leave something out like that.”
But, the early years of his story? Those gaps were filled by Kyle’s mother, Janet, who had a bunch of home videos in her arsenal from when Larson was a little kid growing up in the 1990s and 2000s. They ended up being a prominent part of the documentary, too, telling the story of how Larson grew into the racecar driver he’s become today.
“I think it was really important to show that, I mean, he’s been doing this, or at least the idea of racing was thrust upon him from the moment he entered this world, and I thought that was very important,” Hill explained. “It also just showed how his parents paved the path for him to be able to do that, and that he did start from these humble beginnings.”
“I think, for the world we’re in now with the nepo baby – or whatever you want to call folks assuming they’ve had something given to them – Kyle didn’t have anything given to him except for a very supportive family that made sure he had every opportunity that they could provide for him to have a chance to become who he needed and who he wanted to be.”
There’s one clip that features Larson as a child singing the American National Anthem, which stands out among the others, and is featured in the trailer for the documentary. It’s a moment that Hill believes separates this documentary from just another sports doc.
“I will give my editor, Tom Vickers, [with] who we’ve been working together forever, total credit for that. In an earlier version from that first year, the first attempt, he had that intercut with the national anthem from that first year, and so then when we did the second year, it’s like ‘oh my gosh, what’s going to happen with that?’. Because it’s so amazing that we wanted to be sure we didn’t lose it. So, he had to reconfigure it to make it work for that second attempt, and it works beautifully.”
“Just looking for opportunities like that to make the film feel special and feel like it’s not just a highlight reel that you’re watching was really important to us. We felt like the story was deserving of that, and that’s what we wanted to do for us and Kyle.”
After spending a ton of time with Larson and his family and experiencing ‘The Double’ through the eyes of the 33-year-old racer and father of three, Hill learned something quite incredible about the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
“We describe him as having this Zen personality, because he really does; he seems unflappable. [Something interesting] is his ability to have this emotional reset, and I have never met anyone who can move on from something as quickly as he can. It can be a win, or it can be something that, on the outside, might look like a failure, but it is quickly in the rearview mirror for him, and he is looking forward. That is something I really admire about him, and I think it helps him be a better driver because he’s not dwelling on a mistake that he possibly made in the last race. He’s just looking at what he can do now.”
It doesn’t seem like there are any more attempts at “The Double” on the horizon for Kyle Larson, but Hill (like me) believes that if the Hendrick Motorsports driver returned to “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” he would eventually succeed in hoisting the Borg-Warner Trophy.
Photo: Michael Levitt / Getty Images for Prime Video
