Kyle Larson won the 2025 Food City 500 race. Besides marking his second consecutive victory at Bristol Motor Speedway, it also entailed a unique preparation. Cliff Daniels, crew chief of the No. 5 team, watched a recording of the half-mile track’s 2004 night race. He gleaned as much knowledge and information as possible from the race, which Dale Jr. won over two decades ago. And this meticulous approach to racing proves that Daniels is on par with the legends.

Kyle Larson won a jaw-dropping Cup Series championship last weekend. It was not expected until the final laps, when the script flipped with a late-race caution. At the end of it, Larson came away with his second Cup Series title, and Cliff Daniels elevated his prestige to the level of two Hall of Famers.

Kyle Larson’s crew chief is savoring it

Last Sunday, Cliff Daniels joined Ray Evernham and Chad Knaus as the third crew chief to win multiple championships for Rick Hendrick. And in the post-race coverage, Daniels let slip his emotions. “I don’t know how else to say it. It’s an honor. And you know, Chad Knaus was such an influence on my career. Of course, working under him for four or five years, won a championship with Jimmy. And those two together had just such an impact on me from the team building standpoint, from how to compete, how to do things the right way…And of course, Ray Everham is just an inspiration to anybody in the Cup garage.”

Previously, Cliff Daniels had worked as the race engineer for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team. He had helped Jimmie Johnson win the 2016 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship. In 2019, he was promoted to crew chief on the same team. And the following year, he joined the No. 5 team, the same year that Kyle Larson was recruited into HMS. And the rest was history –  the duo has fetched 26 race trophies and two Cup Series championships already. This is reminiscent of the times when Evernham guided Jeff Gordon to three titles or when Knaus helped Johnson to 7 titles.

So Cliff Daniels may be a sure-shot future NASCAR Hall of Famer. Yet he values the people of HMS more than the laurels. “We have so many good people and so many good leaders at Hendrick Motorsports,” he said. “You know, that culture and that leadership and that level of care for people to achieve a common goal, that’s what matters. And it’s not any call that we made today. It’s so much more than that. It’s the work that went in to get us here to put us in a position so that we could even have the tools and the things that we needed to go out and perform today.”

Cliff Daniels incorporated many unique strategies to prepare the No. 5 team for the championship. One of those was reading books. He told the press after the 2025 title win: “I wanted to do a bit of a journey with the team of letting the team hear some of the very foundational things from another voice than mine. So I said, “Hey, we’re going to read three books together as a team. We’re going to read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. We’re going to read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. And we’re going to read Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell.”

Clearly, Cliff Daniels was not joking around when he joined HMS. As this team continues to grow, it helps other teams grow as well.

Sharing the team’s talent

We are barely a week away from the 2025 championship. And yet, preparations for the 2026 Cup Series season have begun in full swing. Trackhouse Racing is one of the teams getting ahead of the preparations, as they announced their drivers’ car numbers. Ross Chastain will remain in the No. 1 Chevrolet, but with a new crew chief. Brandon McSwain, who has worked as an engineer for the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team for the past six years, will replace Phil Surgen.

McSwain has limited crew chief experience, filling in for Rudy Fugle at HMS occasionally. In his time, the No. 24 Chevrolet of Byron has paved the way to the Championship 4 in the last three consecutive years. Roping in McSwain on board, Trackhouse continues its trend of making internal changes, including crew member swaps and a new president of racing operations.

Ross Chastain has worked with Phil Surgen since the 2021 season, when he still drove for Chip Ganassi Racing. The duo has won all six of their Cup races. They also nearly won the 2022 Cup Series championship, and most recently earned a crown jewel victory in the 2025 Coca-Cola 600. So, Chastain will be up for a novel challenge. However, as his new colleague will be from Kyle Larson’s championship-winning fold, the expectations are high.

Evidently, changes are afoot in the Cup Series, and Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels are big role models to follow. Let’s wait and see how they perform in the 2026 season.