AVONDALE, Ariz. – The notion that NASCAR is a team sport was never more evident than it was during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway.
Kyle Larson, considered by many the favorite to win the championship entering Sunday’s finale, came down pit road fourth during the final pit stop sequence with less than 30 laps left.
Ahead of him were all three of his championship rivals – Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin.
What Larson needed wasn’t just a fast pit stop, he needed his pit crew to dig deep and find a new kind of speed to get him off pit road ahead of as many of his rivals as possible.
“It all came down to the final pit stop,” said Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels. “I have always pushed our guys so hard back at the shop, the guys working on the car, the guys pitting the car, and to see them shine in a moment where they could shine I think is just incredible.”
Larson’s crew stepped up to the plate and delivered, getting him off pit road first with an 11.8-second stop. That pit stop, coupled with Larson’s job during the subsequent restart and final 24-lap run to the finish, elevated the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team to the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
It wasn’t lost on Larson just how important that final pit stop turned out to be.
“Definitely a team win,” Larson said after the race. “I’m honestly glad that it took our whole — I mean, it always takes your whole team, but in one race, Cliff, the engineers making the adjustments on the car to keep us in the game, my pit crew is the main reason why we won that race, and I’m sure somewhere in there I made some good decisions, too.”
There is no doubt that the No. 5 team led by Larson and Daniels were the best team in the NASCAR Cup Series this year. The team led the series in wins (10), top fives (20), top 10s (26) and laps led (2,581).
Now the team has the NASCAR Cup Series championship trophy that proves they were the best. It reinforces the long hours that Daniels put in at the race shop and the constant work the race team did at each race trying to improve the cars that Larson drove.
Larson didn’t start off Sunday’s race with the best car despite winning the pole the previous day. He led the first lap, but faded early and didn’t lead for more than one lap at a time until a 74-lap stint at the front of the field that began on lap 162.
“We had to make a lot of adjustments. There was a wrench in the window every single pit stop,” said Daniels. “We knocked in rubbers. We did all sorts of…every spectrum of air pressure that you could try, even one by accident that helped us.
“Even the final pit stop the guys had an amazing stop, all four tires had different air pressure, it was a track bar change and tape, and they still won the race off pit road, so that was pretty cool.”
Equally as important as the pit stop by Larson’s crew and the work by Daniels to improve the race car was Larson’s qualifying effort the previous day. Larson won the pole, which gave the team the first pick of pit boxes for Sunday’s race.
Daniels made the obvious choice and picked the first pit box closest to the exit of pit road. According to Daniels, without that pit box, Larson would have never gotten off pit road first during the final pit stop.
“It’s funny because earlier Kyle said he didn’t know that qualifying mattered all that much. Well, it absolutely did, to get that pit stall. What a big deal that was,” Daniels said. “He’s responsible for sitting on the pole, which is stall one. Stall one is responsible for part of the equation that led to the last pit stop. 90 percent of the equation was the guys having an amazing stop. 10 percent of the equation was stall one.”
NASCAR is a team sport. Larson, Daniels and Hendrick Motorsports proved that Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.