Justin Allgaier on No. 5 team: ‘They are all top-notch’
Justin Allgaier recaps his time with the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team as he filled in for Kyle Larson while the 2021 Cup Series champ raced in Indianapolis.
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00:00 >> Well, first of all, any of you that know Cliff Daniels,
00:03 I mean, he is very buttoned up and he says all the right things and
00:07 he does all the right things, right?
00:09 He's very positive on the radio.
00:11 But I told Cliff before the race, I said, listen,
00:14 I don't know what I'm getting into.
00:16 The last thing I wanna do is wreck this thing, right?
00:20 I am not full of myself enough to know that I don't need help.
00:24 So any little piece of advice that you can give me along the way,
00:28 make sure you're telling me because the only way I'm going to get better is to have
00:31 direction from you and what everybody else is doing.
00:33 And you have so many great partners in the three other cars here at
00:37 Hendrick Motorsports, all of our key partners at Chevrolet.
00:40 I mean, they're able to see all of that.
00:43 I mean, they're able to see all of the data from every driver, but
00:46 they're really able to hone in on kind of what we have as a balance and
00:49 what we need to be doing.
00:51 Those are tools that are invaluable, right?
00:52 As a young driver of this kind of car, I'm definitely not a young driver.
00:57 I got plenty of gray hair to prove that I'm not.
00:59 But as somebody that's not driven a lot of laps in this car,
01:02 those moments are invaluable.
01:03 And as you're learning it, it was a couple of spots here, next restart, okay,
01:07 we gain a couple more spots.
01:08 And I think you saw the progression when I was able to understand what he was
01:14 telling me and really put it into play.
01:16 I love my seven guys on the Xfinity side.
01:18 They are as good as they get.
01:20 I love the mental game of it.
01:23 I love their attitude.
01:24 And that's one thing that the five does well.
01:26 Cliff is a very, very good leader, but he has incredible people on the five car.
01:31 Pit crew, mechanics, everybody, engineers, I mean, it's really special.
01:36 And Kyle Larson is an incredible race car driver, but
01:41 they all bring each other up for a reason.
01:43 They're all top notch, and it was cool to experience.
01:47 I think you take away some things.
01:50 There were some things tonight that probably didn't suit my style, but
01:55 there's some things that I think we can go back and
01:58 kinda look at how they procedurally did some things, and I think it will be really good.
02:01 So I think that for me, tonight was just a lot of fun.
02:05 I was able to look inside the fishbowl of an ultra successful organization and
02:10 driver and car team and make the most of it.