Stronger than ever, No. 5 team sits on the precipice of another title shot

Cliff Daniels would argue that the version of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 team that will race Sunday at Martinsville Speedway is as strong or stronger than it’s ever been.

“It’s a very simple cliché statement, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Daniels said on Saturday. “We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs this year.”

Martinsville is the site of the final elimination race in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason, and Daniels has the task of guiding his team into the next round. They will begin race day with a 36-point advantage while sitting in the final transfer spot. The team last competed for the championship in 2023, two years after winning the series title.

Larson and Daniels have not won a Cup Series race since mid-May. However, their postseason performance has been on an upward trajectory, with four top-10 finishes in the last five races, including second-place finishes in two of the last three events.

“I think there has been a lot of really good character building for us, and to me, that’s as important as any race win,” Larson said. “To know that we have the team that’s as strong as we are, ready to fight and compete together every week, no matter the results, and certainly we have high expectations for ourselves the next two weeks.

“But what’s most important to me right now is how grounded we are, how connected we are, and we’re certainly up for the challenge.”

The No. 5 team's performance was one of the biggest stories of the summer, particularly the stretch beginning after Larson made his Indianapolis-Charlotte double attempt and stretched into the postseason. Larson admitted in July the team was in a slump, but also cautioned that it wasn’t as bad as it could be considering the numbers they were posting.

In addition to going winless, he led just 51 laps in the 14 races beginning with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte and ending with the regular season finale at Daytona. The team posted seven top-10 finishes in that stretch.

He still began the postseason as the No. 1 seed, however, and is now the series leader in stage wins (10), laps led (1,106), the second-most top-10 finishes (20), and has the third-most playoff points (32).

“Something I would say as an overarching story for our team this year – and I want to start by saying this: I am very, very proud of everyone on the No. 5,” Daniels said. “The road crew, shop crew and pit crew for the resilience that we’ve shown through the season. Someday, I hope to get to tell the story of a lot of the details that we were experiencing at a personal level with individuals and a lot of different things on the team, and even professionally with how we had the new pit crew coming in, and a lot of what it takes to gel and form together as a team.

“Our conversations when we were in the slump were that some of it was a little misleading if you just look at the finishing position. Mexico, we had a great qualifying effort, a really strong car, and we got taken out in the rain on lap two, and I can think of a few other examples where our day just never really had a chance to materialize, and we were kind of playing from our heels."

The pit crew change happened before the spring race at Darlington Raceway. When the move was made, Daniels stressed it wasn’t about who was doing something right or wrong, but about trying to capitalize on group speed on pit road. Larson is still crewed by that same team.

Another event from this season, of those publicly known, was the passing of the team’s friend and PR representative, Jon Edewards. The team responded by dominating the spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway a few days later, but it wasn’t without heartache.

“I don’t know that we ever felt nearly as weak as maybe what the storyline would suggest,” Daniels said. “We knew that we had ground to cover, and we were balancing a lot of challenges outside of racing in addition to traveling, the fact that we weren’t getting the finishes and we were hemorrhaging some points and weren’t where we needed to be. Again, I’m incredibly proud of the resilience of the team, the way everybody has bonded together. The culture of our team has never been stronger, even [for] Kyle himself.

“I think it’s helped ground us all together in a way to bounce back, to be resilient, to show the toughness to come into this stretch of the playoffs and still be strong.”

Larson is one point behind Christopher Bell for third on the playoff grid, which would move him off the bubble. William Byron, Larson’s teammate, is the first driver below the cutline.