Cliff Daniels, despite having one of the most talented racers of an entire generation, had very little faith that he and Kyle Larson could pull off their eventual victory in the Brickyard 400.
It wasn’t a lack of conviction in his own abilities as an elite crew chief either. It’s just, as he explained to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Dale Jr Download podcast this week, there was little faith that the No. 5 could overcome the lack of track position from their strategy.
Earnhardt played up a fair question to kick off his interview with Daniels over the topic.
“As the race was playing out, it looked like, even though you know, Blaney was relatively quick, you guys, you know we’re able to be more aggressive because of your situation with fuel, some of the cars we’re trying to save to make it to the end, Blaney one of them,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don’t know, I mean, where was your confidence level, that you could just drive up there without the yellows and take this lead and win this race?”
What did he think their chances was?
“One out of 10,” Daniels said. “Just being honest. I think we, and maybe I’ll just speak for myself, I think I underestimated how much those guys were going to have to save fuel, you know, knowing that they were going to be more than just a lap short.
“One thing that I thought was really interesting, and I’m sure you saw this play out, when they were all saving fuel, they were keeping their gaps to the cars around them pretty tight, which almost allowed for this little bit of accordion effect, and the accordion is what helps Kyle do such a good job of building runs. Of course, at the time, we had fresh tires, we had the fuel, so we didn’t need to take anything into consideration, as far as our level of aggression. And so, when guys that were saving fuel were blocking us, like they should, in doing that, they were actually further tightening the gaps, you know, to the cars around them, which would create more of an accordion, and it just kept giving us a window. You know, like Kyle described it, to kind of throw some bombs on entry, and get spotters to call out the spot for us.
“So, that was really interesting to me, and we had to make a couple adjustments to our car leading up to that point, so it could turn good enough in traffic. The NextGen car, you know, typically the aero effects, somebody gets really tight in traffic. So, I was glad we had a good enough adjustment in the car, that Kyle can really kind of arc out and turn to build a run, and it was pretty wild to see the way he got through there so quickly.”
