LAS VEGAS — If there’s one thing the NASCAR Cup Series garage unequivocally agreed on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it’s that Kyle Larson is the standard right now.
Through five races of The Chase presented by Mobil 1, Larson has yet to finish outside the top five, with a mind-melting 2.2 average finish and 54.6 points per race.
Sunday was Larson’s grittiest performance yet for the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team. With crew chief Cliff Daniels leading the rally, Larson charged back from a 26-second pit stop, falling off the lead lap and wading through abysmal early handling to contend for the win before finishing second.
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Just when it seemed like Larson was due for his first day of postseason trouble, he, Daniels and Co. found a way back toward the top of the mountain all over again — spelling further trouble for his fellow Chase contenders behind him.
“We’ve done it before, so it’s not like a surprise,” Larson said of his rally. “Because of that, I was confident that we could dig ourselves out of it and potentially get a win out of the day, and we almost did that. So yeah. I wish our balance had been closer to fire off just because we left so many stage points out there. We’re plus-40, and it could easily be plus-50. So a little bit of a missed opportunity, but definitely a great rebound, so yeah, happy with the fight.”
Another man satisfied with Larson’s resilience was Jeff Gordon, Hendrick Motorsports’ vice chairman, legendary four-time Cup champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer.
“Just so proud of you guys, man,” Gordon told Larson on pit road. “That was a hell of a battle. I know that wasn’t fun at the beginning, but …”
“It was not,” Larson said, “but it was fun at the end.”
“That’s championship-caliber effort right there, man,” Gordon said.
Gordon knows exactly what that looks like.
The NASCAR Hall of Famer exuded it for a decade before his own protégé, Jimmie Johnson, joined Hendrick Motorsports with crew chief Chad Knaus in 2002 and began rewriting NASCAR history. During Johnson’s unprecedented stretch of five consecutive Cup Series championships from 2006 through 2010, his best five-race start in The Chase was a 3.2 average finish in 2009. But something about how Johnson’s No. 48 team operated always stood out: even in the throes of adversity, Johnson and Knaus could overcome anything.
A prime example came during the 2008 edition of The Chase. On a day when Johnson was penalized and lapped early, Carl Edwards led 98 laps and stormed to the win at Atlanta Motor Speedway (now EchoPark Speedway), putting his elation on display in Victory Lane as he looked to chip into Johnson’s point lead. But mid-interview, Edwards learned Johnson had rallied all the way back to second place — and the dejection that crossed Edwards’ face summed up the No. 48 team’s peak.
“Man, Jimmie’s magic,” Edwards said in disbelief.
The same sentiment was shared nearly 18 years later by Sunday’s race winner, Chase Briscoe. Briscoe swept both stages en route to the win, collecting 75 points and slicing 39 points from his deficit to Larson. He leaves Las Vegas 84 points behind the championship leader. But there in his shadow was the No. 5 car anyway — a team that has direct roots to the old No. 48 team, on which Daniels served as a race engineer from 2015 through 2018.
“I could see like a glimmer of like neon yellow (in the rearview mirror), and I couldn’t tell if it was Blaney or Larson,” Briscoe recalled. “I kept thinking, ‘man, if that’s Larson, he’s got to be really, really good to be able to go from the back, drive all the way back to the field.’ And yeah, obviously I saw kind of a peek of him at like 10 to go. I’m like, ‘yep, that’s the 5.’ And yeah, I mean they’re a championship-caliber team. I mean, they won the championship last year. They’ve won them in the past, and that’s what ultimately championship teams do. They can rally from stuff like that.”
WATCH: Briscoe zeroes in on Larson, No. 5 team
This time, the comeback began with a Stage 1 setback. Larson qualified sixth but quickly dropped to 14th in the first 33 laps. Daniels, in his ever-diligent, never-panic demeanor, crafted a plan for significant adjustments under green-flag conditions that ultimately led to a 26-second pit stop as the team adjusted the front ride heights and crossweight of the vehicle.
“In talking with our front tire changer Jafar Hall and Jesse (Saunders), our car chief, we thought it could go a little quicker,” Daniels said. “The reality is, it’s a really tough space to get in to be able to make that adjustment. So even to say, ‘man, I was hoping it would have gone faster,’ it is really difficult to execute, and I thought Jafar did really well in the moment. I was ready to bail on the change, and he stuck it through and got the change. Like I said a few minutes ago, we had to eat the pain early, knowing that that was probably going to put our car’s overall balance in a better spot to build forward from there. So it’s a tough call to make; not proud that we were that far off, but glad we got the adjustment in, and we were just able to kind of chip away at our race from there.”
Larson admitted he didn’t think the stop or fix would take that long and worried the team had found something broken during the stop. Instead, while he did lose a lap in the process, he was able to take the wave around when the caution flag waved at Lap 45 for a crash by Zane Smith. Larson got back onto the lead lap, stayed there through another pit stop and eventually had a car capable of competing for the win.
“It took so long that, yeah, we came out behind the leaders, and I was like, ‘Damn, this is not good,’ ” Larson said. “But that caution coming out with minimal laps on our tires to do the wave really kind of saved our day.”
And in the process, Larson and Co. delivered dejection to the rest of his competitors.
Tyler Reddick, a five-time winner this season, has battled plenty of issues with his 23XI Racing team through the second half of the season. That continued Sunday at Las Vegas as the No. 45 Toyota dealt with voltage gremlins and the team had to swap out its battery during the Stage 1 break. This time, though, Reddick was able to storm back to a third-place finish — even after Larson bounced off the wall and contact between the two sent Reddick spinning coming to the checkered flag.
“I mean, gotta have complete races if we want to win them. That’s the deal,” Reddick said. “And yeah, we’ve had multiple issues. We had multiple issues today, and it was nice fighting back from them. But played part in coming up short. I mean, we’ve got to win these races. We know that. So I mean, still not getting it done.”
MORE: Dramatic finish for Larson, Reddick | Bell reflects on frustrating day
Christopher Bell ran the final half of the race without power steering. Crew chief Adam Stevens speculated that the power-steering cooler was cracked, allowing water into the system and boiling the power-steering fluid out of the car.
“Never fun running without power steering,” Bell said. “But I don’t know, I got into a pretty good rhythm where I could just kind of roll around, and my car was handling good enough that I could just roll around and do OK. Just disappointing to have a great opportunity in front of us and not come away with it.”
Sitting third in points, Bell is still very much in contention for the championship, trailing Larson by 55 points. But a 19th-place finish at Gateway and a 23rd-place finish Sunday hinder those title hopes.
Briscoe has climbed to sixth and whittled his margin to 84 points, but he sees time running out.
“You’re just getting to the point where there’s not enough races left to make up that many points,” Briscoe said. “And look, it’s still going to be extremely, extremely difficult. But I at least kept myself in the ballgame. If you’re 120 out with five (left), I mean, it’s mathematically possible, but it’s just so hard to do that. So yeah, just kept ourselves in the ballgame and that’s ultimately all you can ask for when you’ve had kind of the start that we’ve had.”
Larson, meanwhile, has no intention of letting off the gas, seeking to continue his historic start to The Chase. He has gained 95 points on Hamlin through five races, transforming a 55-point deficit as the No. 7 seed into a 40-point championship lead.
“These were all good tracks for us, so yes, I’m surprised we’ve gotten two wins and five top fives a bit, but I also believed that we could run well,” Larson said. “It’s gone way better than I thought it would, but still, I mean, five more races and you could see how much points have been gained in the first five. That could easily switch the next five. So just gotta make the most out of the days, fight through them like we did today, and yeah, go to Charlotte next. Don’t look too far ahead of yourself and just focus.”