Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels Turn Cup Series Chase into a Dominant Showcase with 2.0 Average Finish

Although Kyle Larson did not secure the victory on Sunday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, he and crew chief Cliff Daniels took a massive step toward winning the championship by rallying in the South Point Casino 400.

Despite a difficult first half of the race in which they scored only a single stage point, Larson’s strong second-place finish allowed the No. 5 team to extend their points lead to 40 at the halfway mark of the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Championship.

The current standings after the race are as follows:

• Kyle Larson (Lead)
• Denny Hamlin (-40)
• Christopher Bell (-55)
• Joey Logano (-71)
• Ryan Blaney (-80)
• Chase Briscoe (-84)

The dominant performance of Larson and the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 team over the past month is starting to evoke memories of the legendary Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus championship era with the No. 48 team. While Larson’s rivals had opportunities to close the gap, each of them encountered critical setbacks when they had the chance to make a move:

• Denny Hamlin spun while running fourth at the end of the first stage, severely damaging his splitter and finishing 16th.
• Christopher Bell ran up front in the first half but lost power steering in the third stage, ultimately finishing 23rd.
• Ty Gibbs sped on pit road and finished 17th.
• Ryan Blaney finished fifth but, after two mulligans, still needs a win to secure his championship hopes.
• Joey Logano could only manage a 10th-place finish.

Beyond the overall standings, the micro-level details of the race revealed critical mistakes for the rest of the field, particularly Hamlin and the No. 11 team. During the first stage, a caution period presented a strategic dilemma. Had Hamlin stayed out on track, he could have trapped Larson a lap down. Instead, Larson pitted, allowing Daniels to make a crucial 26-second adjustment, which cost them a lap but ultimately set up their comeback. Hamlin’s decision to pit under caution cost the team at least 15 points, a margin that could have kept the championship battle much tighter.

“Just trying to make up the track position that we lost and trying to push to get it back and evidently it was marbles or something up there,” Hamlin said. “It was quite odd, but I went up there to try to get a run and just spun out and obviously damaged the car.”

Meanwhile, Larson was allowed back onto the lead lap and finished 10th in the second stage break, scoring a single stage point. The team made incremental adjustments to the car, slowly improving its handling and executing a textbook comeback reminiscent of the old Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 under pressure.

“I mean, honestly, I always thought that a win was possible because my team just gives me a lot of confidence that we’re going to figure it out,” Larson said. “So it was more just of when I came out a lap down, I was like, ‘oh man, all right, we got to figure out how we can get back to the lead lap here.’ And that all worked out quickly. And then the next run on cycled tires on the wave, I was able to move my way forward on older tires. I was like, ‘okay, my car is not as bad as I think it is now.’ So yeah, let’s just make the most out of it. Which in the back of my mind I still thought if things go right, we could do what we did or better. So yeah, it’s just, like I said, Cliff gives me a lot of confidence that when things aren’t going well in the beginning, we can figure it out.”

When asked about the early struggles and the decision to make a major adjustment under green, Daniels explained the strategy behind taking the risk early rather than digging a deeper hole:

“Yeah, so we were just really loose to start with so how do you make that decision to make a big change,” Daniels said. “And obviously, that’s what we elected to do under green versus trying to ride it out to the stage. My thoughts on that are seeing how far off our pace was and how loose the car was, I’m not confident that if we would have just avoided doing that adjustment and try to do some smaller stuff that we would have made it to the stage on the lead lap anyways. So I wanted to go ahead and try to get an adjustment in the car that I knew was going to get it closer and eat the pain early at risk of obviously what it was and give us that much more opportunity to fight back from there versus delaying that and having a big hole to dig out of at the stage. Again, not proud of the fact that we started off, but proud of what the team did to get it back closer and Kyle put up a heck of a fight.”

With a remarkable 2.0 average finish through five races, Larson and Daniels are displaying championship-level resilience. Daniels acknowledged that they may have overachieved given how the day started, but credited the collective effort of the No. 5 team and Hendrick Motorsports for staying in the fight.

“I think we probably overachieved there at the end with how our day started,” Daniels said. “So yeah, I mean the finishes have been great, but honestly it’s a testament to the hard work from all the guys on the 5 team, everybody back at Hendrick Motorsports. It’s not been an easy season. It’s not been a great season for a lot of reasons, but we’ve continued to stay in the fight and it’s going to take that moving forward.”

As Larson continues to pull away, the rest of the championship contenders can only hope that the law of averages catches up, as a 2.0 average finish is statistically unsustainable over the long haul. Hamlin remains focused on executing at his best to close the gap.

“Just got to play the ball from where it lies and where it lies is we got a little gap we got to make up, so we got to perform at our best,” said Hamlin.

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