In the four plus years that crew chief Cliff Daniels has worked with Kyle Larson, he has learned to just take his hands off the figurative wheel.
After all, as the 2021 champion and someone considered a generational driver behind the wheel of any race car, Larson probably has it covered and any attempt to influence him would likely just disrupt him instead.
So, when Larson dropped two positions, from second to fourth on the final restart with 50 laps to go, Daniels didn’t touch his microphone’s button. When Larson bounced off the wall and again fell from third to fourth with 38 laps to go, Daniels again didn’t touch the button.
He trusted Larson to go do Larson things.
“There are times in the past where I was like, ‘Hey, man, let’s back it down just a little’ or whatever. We would talk through it. I now know and I think he knows where we stand together that that is him getting his rhythm and finding the limits.
“The Next Gen car is tough and can handle it.
“Even at the end of the race I didn’t want to distract him from what he’s doing because I knew he was putting in the work. … I knew he was putting in the work to find his limits and to know what he was going to have to do to catch those guys and pass for the win.”
Daniels said there is a different stylistic approach that every driver requires in terms of communication.
“I’ve learned enough how to not take him out of the rhythm of the space that he’s in of knowing there’s a mark I’ve got to hit on entry, there’s a line he’s got to hit by the wall, set up his exit, the way his whole cadence with that is,” Daniels said.
“I think my role now is really just to encourage him in what he’s doing. I know he’s pushing. I know he’s learning every lap. I just encourage him to do what makes him special.”
At the same time, Daniels doesn’t need to say anything because Larson already knows exactly what would be said, and the racer-turned-engineer has already influenced his real-time approach.
“For me, it’s calming I think to get those little reminders late when I’m pushing hard to close on those guys,” Larson said. “You know, 10 laps sounds like not a lot of time but it honestly is a lot of time.
“I went into (Turn) 1 and hit the fence. Then I reminded myself when I got to exit (of Turn) 2 and was like, ‘Okay, I’m way faster than these guys. Let’s just calm down.’”
It’s interesting that everyone just kind of assumes Larson is the favorite to win Homestead-Miami every time he unloads but this was not a dominant performance by any stretch.
Larson bounced off the wall several times. There was a stack up on pit road where Josh Berry bounced off Larson and punch a hole in the exhaust rocker panel box. That scrubbed some speed out of their car.
There are days where Larson and Daniels have absolutely dominated races but both of them ultimately felt pride over how they won this one — an effort characterized as ‘workman.’
“It was a workman-like day,” Larson said. “We’re always hopeful for the flashy, showy days that we know we are capable of to go lead the most laps and win both stages.
“Honestly, in our relationship together and our career together as a 5 team and with Kyle being with us, we’ve seen so many different ways that these races have played out for us that we try to have that healthy vision of seeing when it’s not going our way, how do we dig from behind?
“How do we have the belief in each other as a team, our chemistry on the radio, just the way we execute the race? Tyler (Monn, spotter) does a great job of staying in that mindset with us too.
“To me what we showcased today is what I think we’ve been building for several years as a relationship thing within our team and a process thing within our team where even when it’s not all the things that we want it to be, just go to work and stay at work, keep our head down, and try to execute towards the end of the race.”
Bowman’s Season
Alex Bowman is third in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings but given the vibes of the past year, everyone seems to think that the driver’s future isn’t secure in some way.
For example, when discussing the No. 48 team’s season to date, Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon referenced the reassurance and support that the company has for Bowman and crew chief Blake Harris.
“I think what we’ve worked on the most is just making sure he knows he’s got the support behind him,” Gordon said. “I think they’ve been searching for a little bit more depth in the team. …
“Alex and (Blake) have always been on the same page and have a lot of confidence in one another. But when a team has the confidence that the organization is behind their moves and supporting them and the sponsors are there for them, it’s, Hey, take all those things off to the side (and) don’t worry about that. Just go and make your race cars the best you can make them. Drive the car the best you can. Prep the best you can. Mentally, physically just be in a position to go capitalize when the day goes well.
“I think that is really what I’m seeing this year in them, but also what you saw today.”
So naturally, the follow-up question is about the rumors from last season that Bowman is currently racing for his job. Is that part of this too?
“That’s mainly what I was meaning,” Gordon said. “There’s the support on the inside too of, ‘What do you need?’ Not just Alex but Blake (and) the whole team. Go to Chad Knaus, Jeff Andrews and say, ‘What does this team need and what are they missing and how do we go get that for them,’ whether it’s personnel (and) usually it’s personnel.
“Then beyond that, right, yeah, it’s the noise that’s been around some of the things there. This is our guy. We’re happy to see them doing well.”
So, there it is again, Gordon saying as he has said for a half year now, that Alex Bowman is their guy for the No. 48 and has a contract that runs through next season as it is.
But despite a perennial top-5 campaign so far, you know that Bowman wants to win to silence the doubters or make any such change at the team harder for the company to hypothetically make.
Bowman is in good spirits though, especially coming up just short at a track that has historically challenged him.
“The 5 was way better than us on the long run, all day, and I just tried to get too much there,” Bowman said. “We hit the fence and bent the right front, lost feel of where I was at, and really let the 5 by.
“That’s on me and needed to do a good job there, but I’m also not sure I was going to hold him off anyway. Certainly made it easier on him than I wanted to. But really, if that was the only guy better than us today, it’s not the end of the world, but need to go get some trophies moving forward.”
Height of Hendrick
Speaking of the standings and overall performance, Hendrick Motorsports is putting together the best overall season through the six races.
That’s even with Christopher Bell having won races two through four over the past month.
All told, William Byron, Larson and Bowman lead the standings and Chase Elliott is sixth. That’s kind of incredible, no, Gordon?
“Yeah, it really has been,” Gordon said. “I know we’ve had a couple races where all four of the cars are in the top eight or ten. You know, it’s a finicky sport because you want to get off to a good start (and) get in a good position in points so that you’re not on your heels and playing catch-up.
“So that part is really nice.”
If that sounds like a butt, it’s because there is.
“But we’ve been getting beat, you know,” Gordon said. “While it’s nice to have won the Daytona 500, the next three weeks, maybe take out Atlanta because I think our guys were in position to win that one but Phoenix they got beat. Vegas, I mean, there are a few things that kind of didn’t go great there but basically got beat there, too.
“So I think our guys really focused more on how do you bring the car with the most speed every single weekend? Then when you get to Hendrick Motorsports on Monday, even if you brought four of the fastest cars to the racetrack, one of them said, ‘Mine wasn’t as fast as…’ and we’re just constantly chasing it.”
His point is, that while the consistency is nice, seasons are ultimately defined by how often you won and Gordon wants to turn those near-misses into hits.
“The nice thing is when you get a start like this and you’re up there in the points, it’s the fine-tuning,” Gordon said. “What you are chasing is victories and just perfection is what you are really looking at.
“Just like (Ryan Blaney) today. I mean, honestly I think that was the car. It was ridiculous how fast they were. I still think we’re chasing right now, whether it’s that 12 car or at times the 20 car. (Bell)
“So we still have work to do, but we’re going to take the win and be happy about it and be happy about where we’re at in points and just look at the things we have to work on. We don’t have big things to work on other than just gaining a little bit more speed.”
Superlatives
To Gordon’s point, Blaney indeed seemed to have the car to beat on Sunday. He only got beat for Stage 2 by a Denny Hamlin long pit strategy and who knows now what would have happened at the end of the race with Blaney having lost an engine with 55 to go.
That’s now two engine expirations in three races, Phoenix and Homestead, for the Team Penske No. 12.
“It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us,” Blaney said. “We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
Bubba Wallace also needed a run like this only from the standpoint that his No. 23 team put a whole race together.
They have actually been quite successful in terms of running up front and scoring stage points, giving them a top-10 championship points start to their season but this was only their second top-10 and second finish not in the 20s or worse.
“About fucking time we got one,” Wallace said.
“We know we can do it. Look at Vegas, we got pinched up in the wall … put ourselves in some bad spots. Today, I had to fight for it. We fired off just okay and I said I wanted clean air and good track position. My pit crew was solid and gave me a shot. Good restart and it was on from there.
Wallace led laps late in that final run but faded behind Larson and Bowman.
Even Sunday nearly derailed for Wallace, though, as Noah Gragson broke traction during a mid-race restart and knocked both of them outside of the top-five. He then immediately got washed up by Logano for 10th to end the first stage too.
“I get fenced by (Gragson) and I’m on the outside of (Logano) and he gasses up, don’t know what he’s doing, and I’m like, what are we doing here,” Wallace said. “Just race how we get raced moving forward but taking a deep breath, and having good people around me has been important, but being a jackass is going to get me being a jackass back.”
Denny Hamlin has been competitive in every race this season but is looking for his first win too. He said fifth is good but not great and leaves Homestead eighth in the standings with a stage win.
“I just needed more speed and track position,” Hamlin said. “Just didn’t do great metric wise on pit road. On the restart, I lost a couple of spots and that was a killer. I tried to block (Chris Buescher) on the final restart, and ended up under (Wallace) and it put me three-wide bottom and got freight trained by some guys.
“Overall, not a great day, but a good day and just need some more speed.”
Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece added top-10s to continue their positive momentum.
“We used this Kroger/Farm Rich Ford Mustang up today, but it was a pretty fun day. We made some progress on it, but we still have some tweaks to be better. We’ll work on that, but this was a pretty solid Homestead given where we were the last go-round. The team made some good adjustments and we had a strong restart and was able to hang on. I wish we could have gotten one more. We were definitely faster than the 11, but we were kind of stuck in one lane and it’s the lane he wanted to run too. I just couldn’t find a lane to get by, but, overall, it’s good to be that fast down here. I’m excited.”
-Buescher
“I felt like it went pretty well today. We made an adjustment there and lost a bunch of track position, but we were definitely pretty happy with how the car was and put it back to where it was and drove forward. I’m definitely pretty happy. This is something that I’m pretty proud of and I feel like if we can just keep consistently doing it, we’ll be good.”
-Preece
It was another disappointing day for their teammate and boss Brad Keselowski in 26th.
Chase Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson were left furious with NASCAR.
The quote
“I think if we would still have the 2021 car, I would have about 50 Cup wins right now. I think switching to this car has limited us from winning.”
Results
- Kyle Larson
- Alex Bowman
- Bubba Wallace
- Chase Briscoe
- Denny Hamlin
- Chris Buescher
- AJ Allmendinger
- Tyler Reddick
- Ryan Preece
- Justin Haley
- Zane Smith
- William Byron
- Austin Dillon
- Joey Logano
- Erik Jones
- Noah Gragson
- Josh Berry
- Chase Elliott
- Austin Cindric
- Michael McDowell
- Kyle Busch
- Daniel Suarez
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Ty Gibbs
- Brad Keselowski
- Ty Dillon
- Cole Custer
- Christopher Bell
- Todd Gilliland
- Ross Chastain
- Shane Van Gisbergen
- Riley Herbst
- Cody Ware
- JJ Yeley
- Ryan Blaney
- Carson Hocevar
Provisional playoff grid
Christopher Bell WWW
William Byron W
Kyle Larson W
Josh Berry W
Alex Bowman +75
Tyler Reddick +59
Chase Elliott +51
Bubba Wallace +36
Denny Hamlin +34
Chris Buescher +34
Ryan Blaney +32
Joey Logano +30
Chase Briscoe +5
Ross Chastain +4
Michael McDowell +4
Ryan Preece +0
—
Kyle Busch -0
John Hunter Nemechek -0
Ricky Stenhouse -1
AJ Allmendinger -4
Austin Cindric -9
Daniel Suarez -12
Erik Jones -14
Justin Haley -16
Zane Smith -18
Todd Gilliland -23
Carson Hocevar -26
Austin Dillon -26
Ty Dillon -26
Brad Keselowski -36
Riley Herbst -37
Noah Gragson -38
Shane Van Gisbergen -43
Ty Gibbs -52
Cole Custer -64
