Twenty-six regular-season races passed without a victory for Kyle Larson. Ten Chase races later, he was a three-time Cup Series champion. Between those two points sits a conversation that Rick Hendrick nearly had very differently.
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“Yeah, it’s really special, of course. More than it’s a testament to me or Kyle, it’s a testament to the people at Hendrick Motorsports, all the guys on the No. 5 team, that stuck it out through a really tough season, and Mr. Hendrick, he was just talking to, and he said we were rags at the beginning of the year, and I love to use his phrase there because, you know, it was tough we were down, but we weren’t out – we had to dig deep, and you know, fight back and have a peak at the right time,” Cliff Daniels told SiriusXM NASCAR via X.
“Timing was a big deal for it, and that’s just because of all the hard work from the great people at the shop, Chevrolet, Hendrick Motorsports, and, again, all the guys on the five, so very special and thankful to be here.”
That word, rags, carried real weight inside an organization used to setting the pace. According to a November 9 report from Hendrick Motorsports, the summer slump left its owner angry enough to plan a stern meeting with his drivers and crew chiefs.
“I remember Jeff and I talked. I was all fired up one day,” Hendrick said. He had been ready to ask, “What’s wrong with you guys?” before changing course after speaking with Jeff Gordon.
“These guys need us to take the pressure off,” Hendrick explained. “We need to say, ‘Look guys, we’re going to figure this out. It might take us a few more weeks, it might take us the rest of the year.’ The only way you’re going to destroy this organization is from the inside.”
The approach worked because it matched what the team needed most. Rick Hendrick said the room exhaled, then pulled together and began working more closely. Gordon later called it the best meeting of the year, noting that the teams had expected a dressing-down and instead heard that leadership had their backs.
The need for calm was easy to see. Chevrolet’s updated body had sent Hendrick Motorsports searching for speed and a better feel for the car’s balance, and answers were slow to come for a team not used to waiting.
Then the Chase arrived, and everything flipped. Larson and Daniels turned the final ten races into a stretch that invited comparisons to Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus.
Larson entered Homestead 67 points ahead of Christopher Bell and clinched with a fourth-place finish in Stage 1. Daniels delivered the news by radio, and Larson called it “a little anticlimactic.”
Hendrick, who collected his 16th Cup title as an owner, joked over the radio during the caution: “Now you can ride the wall.”
NASCAR has seen championship teams turn difficult starts around
Tony Stewart’s 2011 title is the closest parallel. Stewart went winless through the 26-race regular season and entered the Chase as the ninth seed. He then won five of the final ten races, including Homestead, to beat Carl Edwards on a tiebreaker for his third Cup title.
Kevin Harvick’s 2014 championship offers a team-building parallel. His first year at Stewart-Haas Racing paired him with crew chief Rodney Childers and a freshly assembled crew. Speed was there, but mechanical and pit-road problems wrecked strong runs, and Harvick later said it took much of the first half of the season to sort them out. The group eventually won five races, including Homestead, for his first Cup title.
Neither case matches Larson’s season exactly, but both reinforce Daniels’ point. A bad opening stretch does not have to dictate the finish when a team gets time to diagnose problems and trust one another when the chance finally arrives.
Hendrick also said the slump tested the partnership between Larson and Daniels, because both were used to winning. He believed their confidence kept things from coming apart, and rather than pointing fingers, they dug harder.
The title was Daniels’ third, all with Larson, which ties him for fourth all-time among Cup crew chiefs. He was also a race engineer on Johnson’s 2016 championship team, a direct link between two generations of Hendrick title winners.
For Larson, the result carried historical weight. He became the first back-to-back champion since Johnson in 2010 and the 11th driver with three Cup titles, delivering Hendrick championships in 2021, 2025 and 2026.
Hendrick never did deliver the speech he had originally planned that day. The trophy belongs to Larson, Daniels, the No. 5 crew and Chevrolet, but the road back also ran through an owner who understood that a team already carrying the weight of expectations needed time, not a lecture.