How Kyle Larson’s pit crew won a late race off pit road to ultimately win NASCAR’s championship

“They are the true winners of this race.”

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kyle Larson’s 6-year-old son, Owen, asked his dad several weeks ago why the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver never wins a race when he’s at the track.

“‘You always finish second when I’m there,’” Larson recalled his son saying.

Larson and his team snapped that streak for Owen in the NASCAR Cup Series championship race Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, winning both the race and his first championship at the sport’s highest level after a dominating season.

Starting on the pole and leading 107 of 312 laps on his way to victory, Larson celebrated with his team before jogging up the track to grab the checkered flag. He immediately handed it to Owen, who held it out the window of the No. 5 car as Larson drove them around the track for a victory ride.

“Owen had been giving me crap a month and a half ago about how I can’t win a Cup race when he’s there, so that added a lot of pressure,” Larson said after winning his series-high 10th race of the season and first at the one-mile desert track. With five victories in the playoffs, he tied Tony Stewart’s 2011 mark for most wins in a single playoff run.

Larson completed his first year with Hendrick Motorsports after missing most of the 2020 NASCAR season. In April of that year, he said the N-word during a live-streamed iRacing event, and Chip Ganassi Racing fired him while NASCAR suspended him.

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Although the driver is usually the one in the spotlight, NASCAR is a team sport, and Larson likely wouldn’t have been in a position to take the checkered flag without an outstanding final pit stop, which put the No. 5 car out front for the remainder of the season finale.

Behind Larson, championship contenders Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott finished the race second, third and fifth, respectively. Ryan Blaney — who was eliminated from the playoffs prior to the title race — finished fourth.

“There were so many points in this race where I did not think we were going to win,” Larson said. “Without my pit crew on that last stop, we would not be standing right here. They are the true winners of this race. They are true champions.”

The final caution flag of the race came out on Lap 283, and when all four championship drivers pitted, they took four tires apiece. But the No. 5 team’s stop was so fast that they gained three spots on pit road coming out of the No. 1 pit stall, while the other title-hopefuls either maintained the same position or lost at least one.

The No. 5 team’s execution in the right moment, crew chief Cliff Daniels said, goes back to Hendrick Motorsports’ pit crew department and how it’s been “pushing our guys every week.”

“And I know that sounds basic and simple,” Daniels explained. “But it is that simplicity of the reps, the routine, the pushing, the workout days (and) the practice days that made the difference for us at the end of the day today, which, we all know if the 5 car didn’t win the race off pit road, we probably don’t win the race. We probably don’t win the championship.”

And on the final restart with 23 laps to go, Larson shot out to the front and held off Truex trying to catch him from fractions of a second behind.

“We just had a slow stop,” Truex said. “I think if we would have had the lead, we could have held him off. But hindsight is 20-20, and we didn’t have the lead, so here we are.”

Daniels said “it was pretty funny” that Larson previously told his crew chief he didn’t think “qualifying mattered all that much” just because of how crucial that last pit stop was for the No. 5 team, along with earning the best pit stall.

“It was a total team effort, not just from the whole season but from the whole weekend,” said Jeff Gordon, the four-time champion, Hall of Famer and co-owner of Hendrick Motorsports.

“How they prepared to go qualify and get that lap to win the pole, get the No. 1 pit stall, and they had great stops all day long. … I think I heard it was the second-best stop of the entire year. That’s what championship teams do.”

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