Team Chevy Scores 12th NCS Victory of 2021
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Kyle Larson’s title of the winningest NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) driver of the 2021 season continues on by driving his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Camaro ZL1 1LE to victory lane in the NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) return to Watkins Glen International in the Go Bowling at The Glen. Rolling off in the fourth starting position, Larson drove his Hendrick Motorsports’ Chevrolet to top-five finishes in both stages, leading 27 of the 90-lap, 220.5-mile race to capture the driver’s 11th NCS career-victory and fifth of the 2021 season.
The 29-year-old California native’s victory marks Chevrolet’s 12th win on the 2021 NCS season and its 807th all-time victory in NASCAR’s premier division. With just three races left in the regular season, Chevrolet continues to lead in the Manufacturer Points Standings in its quest for its 40th NASCAR Cup Series title. Larson’s victory brought the Chevrolet driver to the top of the Driver Standings, tying Denny Hamlin for the lead, in the battle for the Regular Season Championship.
The victory at the New York road course circuit is Hendrick Motorsports’ 24th road course win, extending its record as the NASCAR Cup Series all-time road course win leader. In 23 points-paying races in the NCS 2021 season, Hendrick Motorsports has made its way to victory lane 11 times, the most ever at this point of the year.
Larson lead a Hendrick Motorsports 1-2 finish after teammate, Chase Elliott, charged through the field after starting from the rear to give the No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Camaro a runner-up finish and its 14th top-10 finish this season. William Byron took the checkered flag in sixth in his No. 24 Axalta Camaro ZL1 1LE. Tyler Reddick rounded out the Team Chevy top-10 in tenth in his No. 8 Chevrolet Accessories Camaro ZL1 1LE, giving the Camaro ZL1 1LE four of the top-10 finishers of the race.
Martin Truex Jr. (Toyota) finished third, Kyle Busch (Toyota) was fourth and Denny Hamlin (Toyota) rounded out the top-five.
KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
Q. Kyle, what a great victory, but there in those closing laps, I have to ask, as you caught all those lap cars were you worried about losing the time there?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I was. Chase was already catching me pretty quick, even with me being in open track, so when I caught those, I think, four cars and got into the 38 right here, I thought I would look at my mirror and the 9 would be right on me, but thankfully had a comfortable enough gap to where I could make a mistake like that.
I want to say a big apology to Christopher Bell. I was inside but I wasn’t inside enough, and I didn’t — I needed to have the nose a few feet further ahead, and the angles just caught there in the middle and I ended up turning him. I hate that. I race with him a lot. He’s probably the one guy that I race with the most in all my racing, so hate to turn him like that. We’ve had incredible races together.
Anyways, hats off to Hendrickcars.com. Thanks for everything you guys do for me, everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, Rick Hendrick, Jeff Gordon, Cliff Daniels, this whole 5 bunch. Another amazing car. I could tell from about lap 3 after I stopped making a bunch of mistakes that we were going to have a car that could win today.
Q. This is your fifth win on the season, one of the most successful seasons of all time. What does it mean to come to Hendrick Motorsports and have this successful of a season?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, it’s awesome. I mean, it really just shows how good the organization is, all the people that they’ve assembled at their race shop, all the men and women. All four of us could not be getting these wins like we have been without them. Thanks to them, and thanks to everybody else I get to race for. Get to go to Iowa this week and chase another big win, so looking forward to that, and hopefully can just keep racking these wins up.
Q. What do you want to say to another massive crowd here at Watkins Glen?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, thanks all you guys for coming out. It’s been a while since we’ve been here, so hopefully we put on a good show for you. It was definitely a good show from my seat when the three of us were going at it for the lead in the first stage, then there in the second and third stage. Just a lot of fun today and hope you guys enjoyed it.
CLIFF DANIELS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
Q. Cliff, that pit stop really won the race when you guys jumped Truex. How good were they the entire day?
CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, they were great. Honestly our first pit stop we just felt a little bit off to our standards, and the guys were hard on themselves, but credit to them, all the coaches back at Hendrick Motorsports; they knew how to be clutch when it was needed. That was the money stop of the race, and they did it.
Q. Kyle was talking about all the information that you were feeding to him. Is that conversation that you had with him pre-race in terms of how much information he wants, how much information you want to give him, or were you just kind of feeding whatever you wanted to?
CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, we’ve kind of adjusted that over the course of the season. He is so intellectual about what he does. So we all know Kyle Larson, right, as the amazing talent and he hits the “go” button and goes really fast. But he’s also really aware of the race around him. Over the course of the season we’ve just kind of developed our communication, and I know that he is in a more comfortable spot behind the wheel the more information that he has.
The timing worked out where I could talk to him right down the front straightaway, kind of fill him in on what was going on around him, and then coach him not to over-drive it and certainly pace himself.
I think that’s just kind of developed throughout the year, honestly.
Q. The regular season points battle is tied right now with three races left. Kyle and Denny both said that they’re kind of enjoying it because it feels like a playoff race almost every weekend. How important is that to you as a crew chief and do you feel that way on the pit box, as well?
CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I would say so, and honestly I think if I was in your position I would ask the same question, but in my position you’ll understand that we’ve kind of had a thing that we’ve done all year on how we call races and how we prepare for a race, so I don’t plan to change that.
There’s a level of competitiveness that we strive for every week, and there’s things that our team tries to accomplish every week. That hasn’t changed. So the way we call the race really hasn’t changed. Our strategy from the start of the day is the strategy that we held to.
I will say that Denny and Chris Gabehart definitely are pros, and it’s going to be fun to race those guys. They’re tough, they’re going to be tough every week. Yeah, it’s going to be fun to race them, but I certainly don’t want to get distracted by that at the expense of calling a good race, if that makes sense.
Q. I don’t think a lot of us expected Kyle to be so good at road courses this year. He’s been decent at them in the past but really has excelled this year, now getting two wins here. What have you seen from him on these road courses that has allowed this kind of success?
CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, he’s naturally good anywhere. One of the things that he challenges himself with during the summer months, and we’ve seen him do it years in a row, especially last year and then again this year, when he gets in a different type of dirt car at a different track, they don’t give much track time, right, so the driver has to adapt really quick, got to give the right feedback to make the right changes to a car.
That format that we have now in the Cup Series where we don’t have practice and qualifying, you don’t have three practice sessions before the race to dial yourself in or out; it’s just load and go. That suits him really well.
The timing of that, A; and B, I’ll give credit where credit is due. We’re kind of spoiled that we have the best road course team in-house, and that’s the 9 team. I think all things being equal today, it was going to be a really tough race to beat those guys if they didn’t have their issue middle of the race, and that’s no bigger compliment that I could give to the 9 team. Chase and Alan are pros.
To have their notes, to have the conversations and just the teamwork that we have with those guys, as cliche as it sounds, is so valuable.
I think a lot of things factor into what you’re seeing this year, and I know I’m getting a little long-winded here, but having good cars at the shop, good teammates, plus this format and Kyle’s all-in-the-gas nature kind of works out.
Q. I asked Kyle this question, and he said it was difficult to judge off one race whether he would have any kind of momentum. When you look at the last five races where you guys had not led very many laps, do you look at today as sort of a turnaround or at least looking back more like the team that we saw when you were winning three in a row?
CLIFF DANIELS: I think that’s a really fair question to ask, and our view out the windshield really hasn’t changed a lot. We’re trying to see everything out the windshield and make sure even looking in the rear view mirror that we evaluate ourselves every week, and if we — I mean, look, let’s be honest, at Loudon we were probably a ninth-place car. We were a seventh-place car; by the time the 18 and 19 wrecked, when you take them out of the field, we were a seventh-place car. I’m well aware of that. We weren’t at the level that we needed to be.
Looking at everything out front and what’s coming ahead, we’re going to prepare the same way using the same methodology that we’ve had all year. We’re going to have the same communication that we’ve had all year and just keep building.
To judge momentum at this point off of one race is hard to do, but certainly we’ll take it.
Q. As the playoffs approach, how do you feel about the 5 team now compared to maybe a month to month and a half ago?
KYLE LARSON: Honestly very much the same. When I look at Darlington, knowing that the pit road speed penalty put us back a little bit at Darlington and then we had to take a couple rounds of pit stops to get back up there and contend for the win. I know Darlington is going to be a good track for us.
Richmond we had a horrible race in the spring but our teammates, the 48, ran really well, so kind of confident that thankfully the 48 had a good race and a good datapoint that we can go look at.
Bristol, that has always been a special place for me and a special place for Larson. I think the dirt race kind of stung, the way it went for us this year, so Bristol is going to be a good race for us.
Going to the next round and go through those tracks and the next round and so on and so forth, I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for us, and we’re certainly eager to get there, but we’ve got to be really smart with the decisions that we make and how we execute.
The way we built our team to go into the summer months was to treat every race like it was kind of a do-or-die race, so we’ve had some training in that. Now the 11 is pushing us to stay on that path, right, and there’s no reason to let off the gas, so hopefully we’re keeping the arrow straight and true and headed for the target.
Q. Earlier in here Kyle talked about in terms of the points race and saying, hey, I want to try to get, build up a little bit of advantage the next couple weeks because Denny does so well at Daytona and he’s a little bit better. For what your driver has done this year, do you even want your driver to even think that somebody is better than him, even though maybe the numbers show it at that type of particular track? How do you, as you build up your driver, what you have to do, that he’s even thinking along those lines, you don’t care or do you want to get in his ear and say, let’s not be thinking that way?
CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I think it’s a fair question. We think a lot alike, and we both knowing if somebody beats us that we have that to shoot for and that we get to go study that much harder. If I think I’m good, I’m not very comfortable, and if he thinks he’s good, he’s not very comfortable. So he’s comfortable knowing that he needs to improve today to be better tomorrow. And I’m kind of the same personality.
I think that’s pretty healthy that he thinks that, and I think that of myself and our team, too. We’re going to look at today and be critical. I know my pit crew guys really well; they’re going to be critical of our first stop. You guys are all going to write about our second stop, but my guys at the shop on Monday are going to be beating themselves up over the first stop. Me and my engineer were already talking about things we could have done to make our car better to the 9 because the 9 was the best car at the end of the race. Like that’s a real thing.
Even leaving here as the winner, we already know two key areas that we can be better, and I think Kyle doing that, looking ahead at some of those races, is probably not a bad thing.
Q. He also talked kind of leading into that, that going into this race one of the things he took a close look at was how Chase got through the Bus Stop. He said he felt like that was a really key point and that’s something he really wanted to focus on going into this event. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at the data or if you’re looking as the race goes on; was Kyle any better in that area? Did he close the gap on Chase in that portion of the course?
CLIFF DANIELS: He did, absolutely. Two things, big credit to Kyle because to himself, I think he had a huge improvement today just in some of the data that we studied the weeks leading up to this to prepare. I did try to look at it as much as I could during the race.
And then the second thing is Chase Elliott is still really, really good here, so he was still phenomenal through the Bus Stop.
Q. Next week at Indianapolis, inaugural race on that road course, obviously Xfinity raced there last year. Is there anything from this season, different courses, different portions of tracks that help with that, or is it so different because it’s flat there’s no elevation, it’s a different type of course? How do you prepare for that?
CLIFF DANIELS: It’s kind of a blend. This will sound weird, but we’ve studied it a good bit. It’s kind of a blend of Sonoma, Road America and maybe even a little bit of COTA. That’s pulling a lot of different areas. Trust me, I understand.
But different areas of the track can kind of resemble other different areas of those other tracks that I just mentioned. We’re trying to be smart and thoughtful in how we prepare the car for that race. I’ve said we’ve got to be smart in practice, execute in qualifying. Who knows for strategy during the race. I think tires are going to matter more than they mattered today, so you may see some guys, if there’s a weird caution, they pit and get tires on the car and could shake things up.
We’ll study up hard.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports