NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 8, 2026

Rick Hendrick

Jeff Gordon

Cliff Daniels

Eric Warren

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Dr. Eric Warren, Jeff Gordon, Rick Hendrick, and Cliff Daniels.

We'll get right to questions.

Q. I want to ask about Kyle. Do we need to start reevaluating Kyle's place in the hierarchy of motorsports history? Not just because he's a great NASCAR driver, but do we need to start looking at him and putting him in that same caliber as A.J., Mario, some of those other guys, because of what he's accomplishing here, but then look at the totality of his career, what he's amassed?

JEFF GORDON: What do you mean 'start'? You should have been doing that a while ago.

Q. Now he has three championships. He keeps building and building and building.

JEFF GORDON: In our eyes, he's there, right? We see what he accomplishes and everything he gets in. It's hard to pick the most impressive thing that he does because he gets in an INDYCAR, he goes fast. Sprint car, he'll fly overnight, get in the car, go win Knoxville, then come back and win the Brickyard, hop in the car and fly the next day in the stockcar. That's rare air. Very rare. So few guys that are capable of doing that, or even get the opportunity to do that.

Whatever stats he needs to accumulate, okay, if that's what it takes. I think he's already there.

RICK HENDRICK: Yeah, I think when you look at how versatile he is, and anything he gets in, like Jeff said, he's fast. He gets in a sprint car, and he wins. Anything he gets in, he's really good.

When people ask me about drivers, if you can't run him against AJ Foyt and Mario and those guys at the same time in cars, I don't know how you determine that.

In my eyes, a guy that can get in most anything and be competitive and win, show up with no practice in a sprint car, or even when he went to Indy, I think he's got to be looked at as one of the all-time greats.

Q. What have you seen on the evolution out of Kyle? It seems like this year, maybe the last few weeks, he's evolved, being able to handle different situations. Doesn't lose himself emotionally behind the wheel. He's even-keeled.

RICK HENDRICK: I tell you, just from my standpoint, I remember going up to Kyle when he was driving for Ganassi. He didn't say much, he didn't show any emotion. I think after the championship last year, he started enjoying like watching his kids. They've done an unbelievable job in winning races. You see his interviews, how he talks more. He's engaged more. He's kind of accepted the fact that he's a NASCAR champion and that he owes the fans, the media, and everyone a chance to see Kyle Larson.

I just think back to the early days when he was tight-lipped, when he was sitting in my basement before we hired him, and he says, "I can tell you, I'm more talented than anybody out there." That's all he said. That's all I needed to hear (smiling).

He just has blossomed in the last few years.

JEFF GORDON: I'm going to brag on Rick and what he built for 40-plus years, also this guy next to me, Cliff.

When Kyle came to us, yes, he knew he was talented and capable of winning races and probably capable of winning championships. I don't think that he knew what he was coming to, the culture that is at Hendrick Motorsports, the way that the people, when somebody like him comes together with a Cliff Daniels, how they support that and how they'll do anything. They're just fully committed to whatever it takes to get that person into position, all of our teams into position, to win races and championships.

I've seen him in our debriefs, again I go back to Cliff, Cliff's leadership and what he demands out of his team is something that Kyle takes very seriously. I don't think he gets enough credit for how hard he works at it.

Because he sees the commitment that he has from Cliff and his team, all the people at Hendrick Motorsports, he's had to elevate his level of commitment. He loves it. It's not that he doesn't want to do it. He wants to do it because he believes in the system, the processes, and what's out there for him if he does that.

I mean, even this week I was talking to Cliff in the shop, he was talking about Kyle was at the sim. Kyle doesn't always like the sim. I don't know how much he likes the sim for Homestead in particular, but he was there. I was asking him details about the sim. It's not about the sim, it's about that Kyle was willing to do whatever it took this week to get prepared for this race because he wants to win this championship so bad and he knows how bad his team wants it. To me, that says everything you need to know about what Kyle Larson brings to the table as a championship-caliber driver.

CLIFF DANIELS: I think any element that I could add to the conversation, we've seen his natural ability. Mr. Hendrick talks about it, Jeff talks about it. He can get in anything and be fast, competitive, he can win.

But the commitment that he's kind of realigned himself with, not just to be a driver who can hop in any car and go fast, which Jeff is alluding to. Some of the sim side of things, the team meeting side of things, those aren't always fun things to do. It's a lot of work, dedication, discipline to have to be at the sim at 7 a.m., right? You hop in a full-motion simulator, and he knows that we're going to make setup decisions from that, like our trajectory for the week and weekend is going to kind of hinge on that.

Where that may have been something previously, there wasn't a lot of fun, he didn't have a lot of dedication to, he really stepped up and kind of aligned himself with that part of the process that could be fruitful for the team for what we needed to hear of his feedback and just things that he wanted to look for to prepare for the race weekend, get the race car prepared.

Not only did he lean into it, I think he's got the famous quote earlier this year, I love to suck. When things weren't going well, he was showing up at team meetings. This is fascinating for me. He really enjoyed coming to our pit crew meetings. Our film meetings, we're breaking down the choreography of a pit stop, every little thing. The whole time that the room is talking about the choreography of a pit stop, he's thinking about what he can do better to get in and out of the pit stall.

He's like, Man, I know you guys were talking about that right rear hang, but I stopped too long. If I would have just hit my marks, that would have set the team up better to have a faster pit stop.

So he's made himself a student of the game over and over in a different way than what we've seen him do, which has been fill his summer and fill his weeks with racing 90 times a year, which is still impressive, important I would say, I think that's very important to who he is, but the work that he puts in at the shop with the team and just that dedication is at a whole new level. Mr. Hendrick talks about it, too.

I think this is important, as well. He's been able to lean into and enjoy the driver development program with his kids, too. There's a lot that he sees of himself in his kids driving and their journey and their struggles and wins. There's been some reflection in that for him. He's talked about it.

He's also been able to enjoy and spend a lot of time with them. He's at a whole new level. Super proud of him. It certainly paid off.

Q. Rick, what is it about Kyle that lets him go from being winless in 50 races to winning three races and another title while also being a guy that you have to remind don't run up against the wall until you clinch the title?

RICK HENDRICK: I'm guilty of asking Cliff, Hey, can you get him off the wall just a little bit. Just get him off the wall. I felt like we turned him loose after we clinched it.

No, I think one of the things, Cliff is an unbelievable leader. In the debriefs, when we were at our I'd say lowest this year, when we weren't performing, I'd go in and listen to the guys talk.

Kyle got up one day and said, Listen, nobody can beat us if we work together.

That wasn't Kyle Larson two years ago. He wouldn't have had that input to all the crew chiefs and the drivers. Cliff believes in management by strength. They all take tests. They know how to communicate. They read books. He's an unbelievable coach and motivator. He has brought Kyle along and out.

Kyle actually took a leadership role in saying, Guys, nobody can beat us if we work together. That's when he hadn't won a race and we'd only won two, right before we started the Chase.

Really proud of this guy and all of the guys that work together. Kept their heads down and just didn't give up. You could see it starting to elevate with everyone. I thought William really had a shot tonight. We've closed the gap. We're not where we need to be. But it's because of it's one team with four cars and four crew chiefs working together.

I'm so proud of them. That's the best I've ever seen Jeff, I think you'll agree, and we've never seen it as tight as it is right now.

Q. Jeff, you have a unique perspective of being the sport's best at one time for an extended period of time. Seeing what Kyle is able to do now, understanding what it takes, how do you perceive what Kyle is doing now? How much does that help to impress what it is that Kyle is able to achieve on a regular basis?

JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I mean, it's very impressive because I look at the cars that they're driving today, how close they are among the competitors. I see how hard everybody has to work to just find the tiniest little gain. That is also true behind the wheel. You want every advantage that you can possibly get, and you want the best driver in there to give you the best feedback you have to build off of, as well as how to tune.

I think that's what I saw this journey this year really signify is, when we were down, when things weren't looking good, how did we react, how did we come closer together, what were the details in which they were ciphering this information.

I got to brag on our friends at Chevrolet because the tech center and the job that Eric and his engineers do played a big role in that. It was totally a team effort.

But driving the cars today, I think these cars are harder to drive. I think it's harder to get an advantage. That means that as a driver, you've got to be on your game and you have to be pushing really hard.

Sometimes you're going to step over the edge. Kyle is not afraid to do that. But he learns from it and pulls it back. I mean, I'm still amazed. What'd you finish? 12th?

CLIFF DANIELS: 12th.

JEFF GORDON: That's unbelievable. I saw what that car looked like.

So yeah, I mean, Kyle is now -- again, going back to what we were talking about, he's a student of how can I be better. I got to say, I've seen a lot of guys with a lot of talent come through, not just Hendrick Motorsports, but come through the garage over the years. I'll even put myself in this category a little bit. It's real easy to get content with the mindset of give me the race car and I'll go show you what I can do. Some of the best talent I've seen, they fall back on that more often than not.

That's not Kyle Larson. Kyle recognizes that at this level and with the cars the way they are, the drivers, other teams that we're up against, that he's got to bring his A game and do everything possible beyond the way he works out, the physical fitness side of it. If going and driving a sprint car makes him better on Sunday, great, go do it, he'll do it. And then the things that Cliff just talked about.

Yeah, I mean, you look at the total package, there's a reason why they've won three championships, because they're the total package.

Q. Rick, Kyle has added a couple Cup titles here in a very short amount of time. He's still only 34 years old, which is only one year older than Jimmie when he won three titles. What do you think it would take for Kyle to catch Jimmie in total championships?

RICK HENDRICK: I think I better ask Cliff (smiling).

No, Jimmie had an unbelievable run. It wasn't in this car, you know? I think that's a big difference. We can't do very much in this car. We could do a lot with the car we had before.

But I think it's possible, very possible, as talented as he and Cliff are together, for him to string 'em together. I don't know if he can win five in a row. They sure have the chemistry to do multiple wins.

I couldn't believe we had five in a row. I think two in a row is pretty awesome right now, yeah.

Q. Jeff, a year ago going into the finale Larson started talking about how ultimately he wanted to catch you. There was talk about four. Last year he said you told him, C'mon, come and get it. What do you tell him now that he's got three?

JEFF GORDON: Same thing. Same thing. He's going to pass me. I already came to that conclusion. Kind of knew that when he was going to Hendrick Motorsports (smiling). He's special.

But yeah, no, it was one of the first things that I said to him when I saw him today. All right, there you go, number three, one more to go.

Even back to the last question. I was on the other side of the Jimmie five-in-a-row championships. The way you do that is, one, you out-team him. You win the ones you're not supposed to win and then you win the ones you are supposed to win. In my opinion, that was last year and this year.

I say this year because when the Chase started, they were the best team, and they proved it week in and week out. They had the cars to do it. They went and won the championship.

Last year, we all know how that one went down. That one kind of fell together in a great way because of the call that Cliff made and the driving that Kyle did. They put themselves in position, and they had something fall their way in a great way. That's how you win multiple ones in a row, multiple championships, is when you have that opportunity, you seize it.

That's what Jimmie and Chad did. I think there were championships, honestly, at least one of 'em, I felt like we should have beat 'em. Man, they never quit. They never gave up. They came back and showed you how good they are and stepped it up and took it to another level. You're like in awe of it.

I think that's what the competitors are looking at with Cliff and Kyle, that 5 team. They're in awe of things they're capable of doing.

Q. Cliff, at the start of the Chase, Kyle said he had zero confidence in his championship chances. That changed with Darlington. Gateway, Bristol. Suddenly it felt like the 5 team. For you, was your confidence in line with his when the Chase started?

CLIFF DANIELS: I think his message changed just a little along the way. And I kid, but in the middle of the summer, there was one of the debriefs we had, and Mr. Hendrick alluded to this earlier and nailed it, Kyle said, Hey, just so everyone knows, we aren't the fastest right now, but we're still Hendrick Motorsports, so I have full confidence that we can come back and win this thing.

I don't remember exactly when in the summertime it was. Mr. Hendrick said it was when we were at a very low point. So that kind of hung with me and kind of resonated with a lot of folks that I think heard that message from him at the time of acknowledgment, we're not good, things aren't going well, but also the belief that we could pull together as the people, the team, the company of Hendrick Motorsports.

Honestly, to me, I think the turning point of our season -- he may or may not agree with this -- there was so much confidence that he brought forward after our Richmond experience, where we had a dismal qualifying. We may have qualified 30th. Obviously poor.

Executed our way to a sixth-place finish, which is nothing to celebrate, but from where we started, it was a very big team execution kind of day for us. And very unexpected for him, he got a chance to hop on an airplane and go to Knoxville Nationals. Anyone who follows that sport, that race closely, to start on the pole at the Knoxville Nationals is no easy feat. There was three or four days in the making of the practice, the qualifying, the heats in the prelim feature to even get to that point.

He showed up, got on the ground within 30 minutes of race time, wins that race. He came back the next couple weeks with the core belief and acknowledgement from everyone at Hendrick that we cared about him more than just on the Cup side 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, 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 to what Mr. and Mrs. Hendrick and Jeff and everybody, Jeff Andrews, as well, had given Kyle in return to make everything available for him to go win the Knoxville Nationals that night.

To your point, we go to Darlington, with the metric and starting deep in the field, we didn't have a great start to the race, we had to work on our car, just 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 that 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 for confidence for him. Then it was game on after that.

Q. (No microphone.)

JEFF GORDON: He's sometimes a little too literal (smiling).

CLIFF DANIELS: I know what I saw. I know what I saw.

Q. Cliff, can you talk about the relationship between Tyler Monn and the organization, how instrumental he is with the team?

CLIFF DANIELS: Appreciate you asking that. Tyler Monn is overlooked maybe sometimes at the power that he has on our team of spirit, of energy, of enthusiasm. He is so involved in our team all the time. He actually has a little desk in our team room where he comes every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, does his notes, does a lot of studying, spends time with the engineers, he spends time with the road crew, and he also spends a lot of time with Kyle.

They have a very special relationship. They text, make fun of each other all the time. They talk about sports and life, if we have good days or bad days.

Tyler's presence, his energy, his passion for our team and for the sport is so powerful, I know it's very uplifting for me when he's around. It's a big deal to Kyle.

More than just the two of us, Tyler has a great relationship with the whole team. The guys love being around him. They know he's involved. I don't know of another spotter in the sport that puts in as many hours or time as he does not only into the craft, what it takes to be good at what he does, but also into the team at large.

Very thankful for Tyler. Proud of him for everything he does for us. Very special to have him be a part of it.

Q. Mr. H, can you talk about resilience of the organization during the second half of the season, how important it was for Kyle to win the championship but also for William to have such a great performance at Martinsville and this weekend at Homestead.

RICK HENDRICK: Yeah, I think it showed the character of the organization. I remember Jeff and I talked. I was all fired up one day. I was going into the meeting. I was going to say what's wrong with you guys. Whether I walked in, I told Jeff, I said, These guys need us to take the pressure off. We need to say, Look, guys, we're going to figure this out. It might take us a few more weeks, it might take us the rest of this year. The only way you're going to destroy this organization is from the inside.

Rudy, everybody, let's just take the heat off. There's no pressure outside. We just need to perform. We get a little bit better every week, it will happen. I think everybody kind of exhaled and just took a deep breath and worked closer together.

I stood there in that meeting and listened to the crew chiefs and the drivers. Everybody pulled together. I mean, it was amazing.

I want to say one thing while this guy's sitting here. Someone said that we get all the information from Chevrolet. That's not the case. He can answer this.

All of the teams that are the three organizations get the same information at the same time. How they decide to use it is up to them. All the information from Chevrolet and the tech center comes to all of those three teams -- Childress, Trackhouse, and us. So there's no funnel that we get it and give it to everybody else.

He can answer that for you, if he wants to.

DR. ERIC WARREN: I like getting into other people's heads (smiling).

There were a lot of things in the summer where the teams really pulled together, like Mr. Hendrick said, in the team, but also across the teams. There was the Iowa test, Chicago test. Everybody really kind of said we have a weakness we got to keep working on.

For me, the Gateway result, that type of track was really some of our weakness. So watching everybody pull together, really try to address the testing.

I get to see Kyle in the background working with a lot of things. His racing IQ, people just don't appreciate. There's the talent, but he's working at it. He's looking at it and studying it in a way that nobody sees, nobody talks about.

It's pretty special to see all that come together, how everybody works together. It takes a lot. The cars are so close, but there's a lot of information that you really got to kind of pick through, work through. Cliff and everybody keeping that positive attitude, just not giving up. We're still learning, still working that hard even today.

RICK HENDRICK: I think that was the Childress. I think Childress did the test, and we supported them. We were there with them. The organizations are working really well together. We all knew we had to kind of lock arms because we were behind.

JEFF GORDON: For the record, that meeting he was talking about, we all not only expected but deserved to get our butts chewed out that day. We were fully expecting it, 'cause he kind of told us the night before he was going to do it.

Then he walked in there, it was the exact opposite. He was just like -- this is his genius of being in business as long as he has, successful as long as he has, knowing how the race teams work, he's seen it all.

For him to be able to walk in and read that room that these guys don't need me to rev them up any more or chew their butts, tell them what they're doing wrong. These guys need to know that we got their back.

It was powerful. It was huge. Unfortunately we had a few meetings during the summer that there were some key messaging that got us through a really tough time. But I feel like that particular one and the way he handled that, the way that meeting went.

After that it just opened up a floodgate of everybody sharing information, diving in deeper. Even after Rick left, I told him, I called him, That was amazing. That was the best meeting we've had all year long.

You could just feel the energy of the room pick up a level. They've been grinding. Cliff could tell you how hard everybody has been working behind the scenes trying to find speed, trying to figure out this car, what's the balance, what do we need to go faster.

So they were worn out. They were just exhausted from trying everything and not just getting the results. For Rick to handle that the way he did, it just energized everybody. We doubled down more. We work even harder, go deeper, longer, whatever it takes. That was pretty amazing.

CLIFF DANIELS: I have a personal relationship with a lot of you in the room. You guys are amazing. Thank you for covering our sport the way that you do, always coming around and asking questions and doing your job. It's powerful and it's important to get the message of our sport out there.

I know there's a lot of growth ahead of us for how we cover our sport. Hopefully Kyle and I and the 5 team can represent our sport well, represent you guys well.

For all of you in the room, thank you for what you've done for us all year long. Hope you have a great off-season.

THE MODERATOR: We'll continue on with Jeff, Rick and Eric.

Q. Looking at Cliff and Kyle, you talked last year how they've evolved with their relationship. What did you see in them with this run that they had with everything that kind of added to their evolution, what you saw differently with them this year?

RICK HENDRICK: I think that the confidence they have in each other, when you're not performing and you're used to winning, it tests you.

They have so much confidence in each other, I think both of them decided we're going to dig harder. Kyle, I mean, I do tours through our athletic center. He's always in there. He's with the team. We didn't see him that much. I think that Cliff has worked so hard training his people. Kyle has stepped in.

I think they're at the peak of their relationship. I think it was a challenge early in the year to not point fingers, and they never did. I think this has been a testament of the relationship that they have, which happened this year. It could have come off the rails early on, but it didn't.

JEFF GORDON: Only thing I can add is a year like this year when you come off of a championship, I think we all had pretty high expectations coming into the season. When it starts to go wrong, and it wasn't just the cars weren't fast, there were some executions things, mistakes that were made, that can tear you apart. To Rick's point, it tests the relationship.

I think the way that they came through that shows you how much they believe in one another, how much they feel we're locked at the arms, we're not going anywhere, we're going to fight and get through this together.

I don't even know if they think there's any other option other than we do this together, we don't do it at all. Yeah, they're a great combination.

Q. Dr. Warren, Cliff has been one to do an alternate strategy. My thought is, what kind of resources do you provide from strategy prediction, AI, to Cliff and Hendrick, all your teams? How does that work together?

DR. ERIC WARREN: We created a strategy program in 2012 is really when it started. A lot of machine learning methods. It took all of the teams to really invest in that. Hendrick early on and RCR really worked on making those kind of tools better.

The most important thing is each team kind of has a strategist that kind of works with kind of the Chevy side. We'll look at the tool and say it's predicting this, why is that, is it predicting that a caution is going to come out, no. There's a lot of kind of the behind-the-scenes talking about what the data is showing. That kind of interaction between all the teams to really make the tool better, it just evolves.

Sometimes you take an alternate strategy. The more education you have on that, you know what the risk is. There's been a lot of tools to look at the performance of all the cars together. We lean on that a lot.

Q. Strategists are people from each car group?

DR. ERIC WARREN: Each team does it a little different. Some may have it per car number. Typically there's someone on the Chevrolet side, someone on the team side, and that group is talking amongst their teams if there's a question on a lot of it's fuel mileage prediction, strategy, a lot of that. Just a lot of trying to verify, it's computing things real-time. You're trying to understand when something changes, why is that. Each team typically has a strategist as well as the Chevy side.

Q. That communication is happening in each organization or shared?

DR. ERIC WARREN: Each organization have different systems inside the team. They're not actually shared. There will be different chats or communication typically in a chat talking with engineers about the program. It's a web-based platform that everybody is running real-time. You can see the information and communicate through the platform.

Q. Being here in Miami, we've been away from here for a championship race for a while. Did it feel like a championship week? Coming back next year. What are your thoughts?

RICK HENDRICK: I personally like it a lot (laughter).

No, I just think this is where it should be. I always felt that way. But I love it here. I think we had a really big crowd. People want to come to Miami. It's closer for all of our teams, easier to get together with a party here than Phoenix.

I vote to keep it here.

JEFF GORDON: I mean, I like Phoenix. The facilities and everything that they've improved there is a great place for a final race. We know the racing on the track just can't quite deliver. I wish that were different.

I do feel like this track delivers on so many different levels. I love the energy in the crowd today. It felt big. The whole weekend, there were a lot of people here, just felt really, really big.

This track puts on such a spectacular race. I mean, you are not sitting there, when is a caution going to come out so we can stack 'em back up. It has natural things that happen that just make the racing challenging enough.

There's guys that are better on the short side of the run versus the long side of the run. You saw Blaney come from all the way in the back and still win this race.

Yeah, I think Miami in general, just this part of the country, is a great place to host a big week. We still have the banquet. I'm excited to see how that all unfolds, too.

I agree, as much as I like Phoenix, I think this is the place that we really prefer the championship be at. When they put this on the schedule, I think we all said, That looks like a good place to end the championship (smiling).

RICK HENDRICK: I think the race last night was as good as you'll ever see. The lead changes, the fender-to-fender. That was some of the best racing I've ever seen.

THE MODERATOR: Jeff, Rick, Eric, congratulations on another championship. What number is this?

JEFF GORDON: 16.

THE MODERATOR: Incredible. Enjoy the celebration. Have a great off-season.