Larson, Byron aim to end Hendrick Motorsports’ Daytona 500 drought

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Hendrick Motorsports hasn’t won the Daytona 500 since 2014. “Don’t remind me,” said Jeff Gordon, vice chairman of HMS and a three-time winner of the “Great American Race.” Half of the team’s 2024 NASCAR Cup Series roster has won championships, thanks to Chase Elliott in 2020 and Kyle Larson in 2021. But none of the four, including teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman, have visited Daytona 500 Victory Lane. “There's no other win like it. There just isn't,” Gordon said Wednesday as the organization celebrated its 40th-anniversary kickoff. “And I want one of these four guys to experience that. I want all four of them to experience it over the future because it is so special and you realize it once you win it. But right now, they're realizing how hard it is to win.” RELATED: Daytona 500 starting lineup | See special Martinsville schemes Larson has won some of NASCAR’s biggest races -- the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, the Bristol Night Race and the Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway, to name a few. But the Daytona 500 remains a box unchecked after 10 attempts. What makes it so difficult to win, in his estimation, starts with putting your car in the right place as the laps dwindle away in the 500-mile affair. “It starts from literally like early in the race, I feel like,” Larson told NASCAR.com. “So I think just knowing how to position yourself (and) having a team around you to position yourself for that final stint. And then yeah, I think you see often that, I feel like with a lot of the guys who consistently run up front, everybody else in the field realizes that they've had success and they trust them to follow them. So you really need help from behind as well.” William Byron scored his first career Cup victory on the high banks of Daytona in the summer of 2020 but has struggled historically more in the Daytona 500. In six “Great American Race" starts, Byron has never finished better than 21st and has crashed out three times. “I mean, they're hard to move forward, so you kind of get stuck,” Byron said of racing at superspeedways. “We saw three-wide (racing last year), and a lot of that has to do with saving fuel and how that all plays out. So it's just tough to balance. Now I feel like everyone's gotten so smart with this strategy that it's just more of a track position thing than ever. Like you can't really make a lot of mistakes and get back, so just trying to manage that.” MORE: At-track photos from Daytona Larson and Byron both advanced to the Championship 4 in 2023 as Larson eyed his second Cup title, and Byron made his first true bid. Neither were able to leave Phoenix Raceway with the trophy, but that didn’t diminish the successful seasons of either the No. 5 or No. 24 teams. “We want to be better, and there's definitely room to get better,” Larson said. “But the offseason was good for me anyway. It was relaxing, and you know, raced a little bit. But yeah, just got to spend time with the family and you get to get some more one-on-one time with them because once I start racing, I'm pretty much gone a lot of time. “The last month and a half or so, I’ve been working with Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) and the guys closely, just studying and talking about things and how to be better and where we can get better.” Larson’s No. 5 team did alter a bit through the offseason. Lead engineer Adam Wall is now a crew chief in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Sammy Smith in the JR Motorsports No. 8 car. “So we shuffled some things around with the engineering area and brought one new person, Brian Ross, in,” Larson said. “So other than that, our team is pretty much the same, and Brian has been a great addition so far. I really enjoy having him, and yeah, look forward to getting racing.” Byron netted a career-high six wins last season in a true breakout year for the 26-year-old. The goal is to capitalize on that momentous campaign after falling short to Ryan Blaney in Phoenix last fall. “I think we have our own goals as a team,” Byron said, “and things that we've kind of identified as weaknesses -- or even the strengths that we did have and just trying to keep those, or maintain or get better. And so I feel like there's still areas that … I felt like we could be a lot better and overall just be faster, you know, especially at the right times of year, but try to just have more speed.” In recent years, Valvoline has increased its presence on both the Nos. 5 and 24 cars and recently added a new Restore and Protect line as well. “It's cool,” Larson said. “They're always innovating and trying to come up with new product and they're the first and only to remove up to 100% of deposits. So I think that's something to be proud of.”