HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Larson is on the cusp of winning consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships, the first back-to-back feat among title winners since seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
The comparisons to Johnson’s dominant era in the No. 48 Chevrolet have spread for Larson and his No. 5 team, fueled by their Hendrick Motorsports roots and accentuated by the fact Larson’s crew chief, Cliff Daniels, served as Johnson’s lead race engineer for the seventh of those championships. Larson can further close the gap to Hendrick’s last great by earning his third Cup Series title on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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With 35 career wins and — for now — two championships on his resume, Larson is (fittingly) 48 wins and five championships short of statistically equaling Johnson. But Larson is well aware of the similar tendencies Daniels brings to the No. 5 team that emulate Chad Knaus, the NASCAR Hall of Fame crew chief who led Johnson’s No. 48 team to all seven championships. And Larson doesn’t exactly disagree with the correlations made between the two teams either, even if they’ve stemmed from different eras.
“I think there’s been the comparison of Cliff to Chad for a long time, and then just our team in general,” Larson said during Thursday’s NASCAR Championship Weekend Media Day. “I don’t think I’m as similar to Jimmie as like Cliff would be to Chad, but our teams get compared a lot together, and I always believed that as well. But then I did hear an interview Cliff did where he talked about like, ‘we have our own identity,’ and I was like, yeah, he’s right. Like, sure, it’s great to have those comparisons, but we are a completely different team than what I think that team once was.
“Just the way Cliff leads us — and I don’t know what the word for our identity is — but I don’t think there’s a team like ours that’s ready for moments like our team is. And I’ve said it a lot throughout my career at the 5 team, but it’s due to Cliff. And he’s always evolving as a leader. And there’s no better leader in the sport than him, so I have a lot of trust in that.”
Still working under the tutelage of Knaus, who now serves as Hendrick Motorsports’ vice president of competition, Daniels and his crew have helped lead Larson to all 29 of his victories at Hendrick Motorsports. From team book-club readings to unifying moments through competition, Daniels has encouraged a true team environment within the No. 5 group. Those deeply connecting moments create long-lasting relationships that have permeated their personal lives separately of what happens on the track. And all of that work helps to enhance what happens when Larson is behind the wheel.
“It’s easy to buy into his leadership and what he holds everybody to this standard that he believes we should all be at, and there’s just a lot of accountability,” Larson said. “And when you see him working so hard on not only race-car stuff but his personal being a leader, it just gives you a lot of motivation to not let him down. And then, like I said, just between the little things that bring a team together that he does, I think puts us in a good spot.”
Daniels’ leadership has long been a hallmark of the No. 5 team’s success. But his approach has had to evolve over the years, Larson said. And no time better illustrated that evolution than 2022, their second season working together. The 2021 campaign was a dream come true for Larson and the No. 5 team — 10 wins, a NASCAR All-Star Race victory and the Cup Series championship. The 2022 season would have been a career year for most racers — three victories, 13 top fives, 19 top 10s, four poles, seventh in the final standings — but Larson and Daniels aren’t most racers. And Daniels didn’t take the decrease in performance particularly well.
“He was just super intense that year — like overly intense — I think not only on me, but on everybody,” Larson said. “And I think slowly over time, I think he recognized that’s not the leader that he wanted to be. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t leading in a bad way at all; it was just a totally different type of leadership than what he is today. And each year, he’s kind of progressed and molded into something a little bit different. And see, I really look at the 2022 season as like his eye-opening year. I’d be curious what his answer would be. But just for me being the driver, be like I remember seeing him get mad a lot. Like, he would get mad. And I don’t see him getting mad really anymore.
“I think he learned through ‘22 and ‘23 of a different approach to keep people motivated and keep people working down the right path. And so I look at 2021 into (’22) as being pivotal for us.”
Navigating through professional and personal adversity together has also worked to unite the No. 5 crew over the years. So when they were in the midst of a collective 51-race winless drought before The Chase presented by Mobil 1 began, Daniels’ steady approach and trust of process carried Larson into the postseason.
“I really had no confidence — zero — before The Chase. Hope, but no confidence,” Larson said. “But I would say I would really look at Darlington as that was the turning point of my confidence. I know we didn’t win, but I feel like we executed a really good day. Like we maximized what we had going for us that weekend and that day. And I remember leaving that race thinking like, ‘man, that’s the first time it’s felt like the 5 team in forever.’ Like we were calling a race to win. (I didn’t feel like) we really had been in that position for a long time, and then we got a good finish. And yeah, I was just like, ‘man, if we can hopefully have some close speed and continue (those) strategy calls and execution, we’ll see where it goes.”
Where it’s gone is Homestead-Miami, where Larson was the only Cup Series driver fielding questions and participating in Thursday’s Media Day festivities thanks to his 67-point lead over Christopher Bell in the championship standings and 70 over Denny Hamlin, the only other two drivers still mathematically within reach of Larson.
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“I‘m solo, which is a great thing,” Larson laughed, “but yeah, I’ll be honest — it’s an awkward sort of Media Day for me. But you know, we’ve earned the right for it to be awkward.”
Larson says he is able to shut out the pressure behind the wheel, but he admitted Thursday at Homestead that he is feeling that intensity ahead of race day.
“The pressure and where it comes from would be like, ‘man, you’ve done such great work to this point to put yourself in position,’ ” Larson said. “Like, I would just hate for something crazy to happen to eliminate all the work that we’ve done to get ourselves in a great position to where we don’t have to score a ton of points. So, I think that’s the pressure. Like, ‘man, don’t [expletive] it up at this point.’ “