RICHMOND, Va. — Kyle Larson was fast at the end of the Cook Out 400 on Saturday night (Aug. 15), climbing to finish sixth at the end — but he may have been even faster after the race.
The NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway was scheduled to go head-to-head with the Knoxville Nationals, one of the biggest dirt races in the country. But a rain delay prevented the races in Knoxville, Iowa, from starting on time. That opened the door for Larson to attempt both, as he had already raced in the preliminary events in the Nationals. So, for once, weather helped instead of hurt Larson’s bid at a double.
So as soon as Larson pulled onto pit road after the finish, he immediately ran off to the hauler before being rushed away to a plane headed for Iowa. As a result, Larson could not be reached for comment. His crew chief Cliff Daniels, however, did speak to Frontstretch about getting the two-time Cup champion out of Richmond.
“Yeah, we had certainly talked about it before the race, just what that potential possibility could be,” Daniels told Frontstretch. “And Kyle [Larson] has a great team of people, both here at Hendrick and the guys that are on the ground there in Knoxville to be able to help react in a situation like this. Right after the race, we wanted to get him some food, some hydration, get him on the airplane and head to Knoxville.
“So, again, a lot of great people behind the scenes. I was getting intermittent updates during the race just so I could kind of know what was going on and let him know. Because I would imagine that, mentally, to have to get out of the car after 400 hot laps at Richmond, he wanted to have some time to process and think about it. So I feel like our communication there was helpful, and now, I believe he’s probably on the plane headed there.”
What’s more incredible is that even with Knoxville in the back of Larson’s mind, he managed to snap a skid the No. 5 team had been on. Entering Richmond, he had four finishes of 30th or worse in the previous five races. Saturday was his first top 10 since a fourth at Sonoma Raceway in June.
“For the bad runs that we’ve had lately, the finishing result really hasn’t been indicative of our speed and the team performance,” Daniels said. “It’s nice to certainly get on the other side of that and have a night where we just saw it through and able to come home with a top 10.”
The way the weekend and Saturday night started, it seemed Larson’s rough patch was going to continue to grow. He qualified 30th, and while he did work his way up from there some, he was closer to being a lapped car than a race-win contender.
“The beginning of the race was tough, which we knew it was going to be,” Daniels said. “When the sun’s out and the track’s really slick, it’s so hard to pass. Our car just wasn’t great in that in that situation, and then we just kept working on it.”
In stage two, Daniels elected to pit Larson twice while the leaders only did one stop in the segment. That left Larson two laps down, but putting Larson on fresher tires at the end of that run allowed the California native to unlap himself once and pass all of the lapped-down traffic to get into the free-pass position.
“Yeah, it was certainly a pivotal moment for us, and at that point our car wasn’t good that particular run,” Daniels said. “The writing was on the wall that we were going to go a lap down. He was letting me know on the radio he was really having a hard time, so we knew at that point it was gonna be a bit of a risk, just with the tire sets that we’d have left to the end of the race, having to do it in stage two.
“So that wasn’t what our preference would have been, but ultimately, the right call to get us back, to being … the first car one lap down at that point. Got the lucky dog, and then we were able to maintain it from there. So that was certainly the pivotal moment of the night.”
For the rest of the race, Larson was inside the top 15. On the final run, the No. 5 looked its best, as Larson moved all the way up to sixth by the time of the checkered flag.
“Very proud of the guys on the [No.] 5 team,” Daniels continued. “Great pit stops all night. We had to call a couple of audibles on strategy that ended up playing out to our favor. That wasn’t really the plan going in. We just knew that we were gonna have to react potentially to what our plan was. Kyle hung tough. We had some runs that we were really competitive. We had some runs that we weren’t as good. To bring it home sixth, again, very solid night for the HendrickCars team.”
Larson did make it to Knoxville in time for the Knoxville Nationals. And not only was he able to compete in the prestigious race, he won it.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.