The story of how Larson won his third title depends on who you ask

Cliff Daniels knows what he saw.

It was mid-August, and two notable things had happened in the same weekend within the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 team’s orbit. On a Saturday night at Richmond Raceway, they finished sixth with Kyle Larson after a dismal 30th-place qualifying effort. It was the group's first top-10 finish after a stretch of five races in which they finished 30th or worse four times.

The finish was nothing to celebrate. But it was worthy of acknowledging the weekend turnaround and execution.

Larson, however, wasn’t done that night. Before his team even arrived at his car on pit road, he was off and running, literally, to get on a plane for the Knoxville Nationals. The dirt event had sat idle for hours because of rain, and now Larson, who earned the pole, suddenly had a chance to race.

He did. And then he won.

“He came back the next couple of weeks with the core belief and acknowledgment from everyone at Hendrick that we cared about him more than just on the Cup side,” Daniels said. “Because in a season that isn’t going very well, it could have been easy for any of us to be like, ‘Man, we’re not going to prioritize dirt racing. It’s not a big deal.’ But it was a big deal to him, so it was a big deal to us.

“I think some of that nod of confidence was kind of reciprocated in that moment from what he had given us in that debrief in the summer.”

One of those debriefs in particular still stands out to Rick Hendrick, who happened to go in and listen. Larson stepped up to the plate and told everyone they were unbeatable if they worked together. Furthermore, they might not be the fastest, but they are still a Hendrick Motorsports team, and he had confidence they could come back and win the whole thing.

At the time, the reigning series champions were winless and still struggling to get their arms around the new Chevrolet body. The season was nothing but rocky results.

But then came Richmond and Knoxville, and it was then, for Daniels, that the turnaround began. A turnaround that, after culminating Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a second consecutive championship and third overall for the team, has many trying to understand.

How did they win this championship? When did their title hopes or belief change?

The answers differ between the crew chief and the driver. Daniels points to that August weekend. Larson, asked about it going into Sunday’s race, said he never felt it was a turning point. He was simply happy it worked out the way that it did for him to race Knoxville.

The No. 5 team was starting to get its act together by the time the Chase kicked off at Darlington. James Gilbert/Getty Images

“But it could look like that because I was sucking until Cliff told me that Knoxville was getting rain,” Larson said. “I look at Darlington as the shift in my confidence, and I assume that was the shift in everybody on our team’s confidence.”

Darlington Raceway, the Chase opener, was in early September. Richmond took place two weeks prior.

No matter how the story gets told about this third championship in the years to come, Darlington will be a big part of it. In Larson’s telling, that was the night the No. 5 team felt right again.

“We go to Darlington with the metric and starting deep in the field, and we didn’t have a great start to the race,” Daniels said. “We had to work on our car, had to stay with it throughout the whole day. There was strategy involved, changes involved. He really had to be up on the wheel. To come forward and almost have a shot to win the race by the end of it, and to make calls aggressively to try to win the race, I think, was another token in the bank of confidence for him.

“Then it was game on after that.”

A week later, at St. Louis, the winless streak was over. The following week, after the third race in the Chase at Bristol, Larson had the point lead.

Larson’s run in the Chase will go down as one of the best in history. With only two finishes outside the top 10, Larson averaged 7.3 in 10 races. There were also three wins and 579 laps led (from six of 10 races). And in five of those six races that Larson led, he did so for 80 or more laps.

Naturally, the comparison to Jimmie Johnson has started. Questions about how far Larson and Daniels can go will continue for another year. And the work to try and beat them ramps up for the competition.

NASCAR had not had a repeat champion since Johnson. Now, Larson, Johnson, and Tony Stewart are the only three drivers to have won titles in multiple formats.

So, for all those trying to understand when or how Larson, Daniels, and the team won the Cup Series championship? It seems it depends on who you ask.

But, as Daniels said, “I know what I saw.”