Cliff Daniels recaps Larson’s drive from the rear at the Roval
NASCAR.com catches up with Cliff Daniels at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course to discuss Kyle Larson advancing to the Round of 8 after starting in the rear.
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00:00 >> Here following the bank of America robo 400 with crew chief cliff Daniels.
00:04 The 5, an up and down day for you guys with Kyle Larson.
00:06 I know it worked out in your favor.
00:07 You're now advancing to the round of 8.
00:09 But an up and down day here at the robo.
00:11 >> Yeah, it was.
00:12 And, you know, so much of the up and down started down, of course, starting so far back
00:16 in the field.
00:18 But really I can't say enough about all the great folks at Hendrick motorsports and all
00:21 the guys on the 5 team.
00:24 We finished this car and loaded it up.
00:26 Way -- you know, too late last night, too early this morning, however you want to say
00:29 it.
00:30 It was a long night.
00:31 But everybody did a great job to get the car built, get it here and just work through the
00:34 race.
00:35 We knew the beginning of the race was probably going to start really slow for us.
00:38 And of course it did.
00:39 You know, we had to short stage 1 and trying to remember how stage 2 went.
00:43 I guess it ran almost to the end.
00:45 So we got stage points at the end of stage 2.
00:47 And then kind of had a hole to crawl out of in stage 3.
00:50 So I can't say that it was completely unexpected starting where we did.
00:53 We kind of knew there would be that, you know, slow start, hopefully a progression through
00:58 the field to get some stage points and then have to dig out of a hole again.
01:01 So Kyle did a great job.
01:03 Team did a great job.
01:04 And just really proud of the guys on the team.
01:06 >> We heard you feeding that information to your driver throughout the whole entire race
01:09 of who was leading, how many points you guys needed, where you needed to finish.
01:13 Did he ask for that information or were you volunteering that information to let him know,
01:16 hey, you got to go after it?
01:18 >> We kind of had an agreement before the race that, you know, the relevant information,
01:22 the things that I needed to provide him in the moment, you know, I would try to do the
01:26 best that I could.
01:28 I always hesitate because every time, you know, somebody pits and the cars cross the
01:32 line and you're trying to get lined up for a restart, it can certainly change the picture
01:36 of how things look.
01:37 So I was trying to make sure we had everything kind of buttoned up before a restart and knowing
01:41 what the points were, where we were.
01:43 You know, the pit cycle would kind of always calm down by that point.
01:47 And we had that agreement going into the race just to give him the perspective of, you know,
01:51 how urgent his moves needed to be for a restart.
01:54 So I think it was healthy communication and, you know, he did a great job of doing what
01:59 we needed to do today.
02:01 Of course, we wanted the Cinderella story of, you know, trying to win the race in a
02:03 backup car and all those things.
02:05 But our objective for today was just to make it through.
02:08 And luckily, we did on driver and owner points.
02:10 So all in all, not a bad day.
02:12 >> Well, go get some much-deserved rest and welcome to the round of eight.