NASCAR CUP SERIES: HOLLYWOOD CASINO 400

September 27, 2026

Jeff Andrews

Cliff Daniels

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We're going to go ahead and roll into our post-race media availabilities. We have now been joined by the race-winning leadership and crew chief of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsport Chevrolet. We have Cliff Daniels and president and general manager Jeff Andrews with us. We're going to go ahead and open it up for questions.

Q. Cliff, was Larson pitting and covering Briscoe on that final pit stop, was that spur of the moment? You know, when you saw that he was going to pit, how important was that for him to get on at the same time and then build the lead coming off of pit road that time?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, that was something we talk about a lot going into these intermediates where the high fall-off tracks, the Darlingtons of the world and Richmond and other places like that, you can potentially get an advantage over guys of going way short or going way long. You know, when you kind of get within that five-lap window, you really have to cover if you are the lead car.

In this case we knew all week that if we're the leader coming to the final green flag pit stop in stage 3 that we were going to have to cover that, depending on what the gap out back was. Of course, the gap out back was super close.

Credit to the guys in our war room and our engineer here. They do what we all do to play the game, and you scan the other guy. We heard them call it out over the radio late trying to probably keep us from hearing it and making it to pit road in time.

I called it out to Tyler. Of course, he called it out over the radio, and Kyle made it clean. That was important to try to defend the lead at that point. Of course, the 19 still reeled us in and got us back, but, you know, that was the lead-up to that moment of why we felt we needed to cover.

Q. A lot of this race the lead-up to it was what is going to be the state of the field at that point for the first time. You guys had the dominant car today. You beat the Toyotas ultimately. Does that say anything to you about where things stand now? Do you feel like you've caught up to them? Are things even? Have you passed them?

CLIFF DANIELS: I think we're certainly more in the ballpark. Just kind of observing the field and the top 5, I think reality would also say the 2 was really good. You had the 19, the 11, the 20, at times, that were really good up there.

I think that within that group of the top 5 it was going to be so track-position dependent. If you pit us back to sixth, I don't know that we just drive up and take the lead. I think it would be very difficult to overcome that.

So my expectation now, seeing the way today went, is it's going to be between Hendrick, Penske and Gibbs. It's going to be a close race at Vegas, that has been historically one of the better Penske intermediate tracks.

Charlotte could be a little bit of an X-factor. I feel like that track changes so much just with the weather and conditions. We haven't raced there in the fall in years.

So my expectation moving to Vegas and Charlotte is the field is still going to be really tight.

To your question, the Toyotas didn't seem to be quite their level above the rest that we've seen up to this point.

Q. After Briscoe passed him, I personally was, like, well, that must be it; it must be over. Did you think that Larson was going to be able to track him down and get him back after he had lost the lead?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I mean, a couple of things to think through there. Chase Briscoe ran really hard to put pressure on us and to get us, and this intermediate tire, there is a price to pay. I think the 2 showed most of the race that he did a great job saving his tires early in a run. He was really fast late in a run.

Then when Briscoe was pressuring us, we both could get our stuff pretty hot, and late in the run the 2 would chase us down. When the 19 had pushed so hard to get us, I kind of had a question mark of, like, is his car really going to be good enough to drive away just from the penalty of stress and push on his tires?

I will say I was super proud of Kyle for kind of -- yeah, he took a reset. He settled in and didn't really panic and over-drive his car. It would be really easy to over-drive his car, clip the wall, a number of things.

Briscoe got away by a second or whatever it was, but he was still going to be penalized a bit by traffic, which he was. Was still driving his car really hard to get it hot. Then I could see just in our telemetry that Kyle had settled in and had a decent rhythm going. So now I went from having a question mark to almost an exclamation of, like, wow, we may still have a shot.

So very proud of Kyle for just that discipline, the awareness in the moment to kind of read all of that and to keep himself and his car and his tire work managed well to be able to take it with only a handful to go.

Q. Cliff, you had to answer the question of why haven't you guys won for the better part of a year-plus, which was less than savory. Is there an extra satisfaction to be taken in how things have turned around for you guys, and does it say -- what does it say about not counting you guys out?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, for sure. Nobody wants to go through the struggle, but the struggle can be so constructive, if you let it be, if you lean in the right ways. We have a great company with a lot of great people on the shop floor that are in the teams, engine shop, car shop, leadership.

Everybody kind of having the check of, okay, we're not where we need to be, so let's not play the blame game. Let's look within, and how do we elevate our process, our setups, just digging into all the things you have to do.

You guys have seen this for a long time. The sport goes in cycles. Somebody told me a long time ago, when the sport goes in cycles, when you're on top, you've got to take the best of it; and when you're not, you've got to be patient and be ready when it is your turn.

I feel like we've shown a decent amount of patience. At the same time, we've been patient, just from the emotional level of not letting the struggle really keep us down. We've been passionate in the pursuit, passionate in putting in the work that now, honestly, my opinion, I still don't think as a company we've peaked yet. I don't think as a team we've peaked yet. There's still a lot of racing left and a lot of work to do.

Am I encouraged about where we sit? Of course, but I would be naive to think that this is just going to carry all the way for the rest of the year unless we stay disciplined, do the very thing that got us here of the work and just the grind because there's still six more races left.

Q. One for Cliff, one for Jeff. Cliff, when we have three races out of four, practice qualifying is thrown out the window, how does that challenge an organization and a team? Is practice just for validation, or are those missed opportunities to learn something? What does it say that you guys are excelling despite the lack of opportunities to learn something?

CLIFF DANIELS: It does push you a little bit deeper I think. Just kind of observing us for these races that we haven't had practice and qualifying. For the record, I'm a kind of guy that if you said, hey, would you guys want to test or practice every day of the week, I absolutely would do it. I'm always for track time. I'm always for testing. I would always take it.

So in these cases when, you know, the rain has come and we don't have practice or qualifying, that's when you really have to lean into just your historical notes. The track is different in Kansas spring to fall, of course, Vegas as well and Darlington, and wherever else we just had some rain-outs.

You have to look backwards to kind of understand that even better than what you may have thought you did during the week and then look at what you've developed in your setups along the way, what is your approach is this week.

Sometimes for practice you can unload with a thing or two, maybe a little bit off script of what normal would be, and think, okay, we can turn around it, we can work with it and try to get it balanced. When you don't get a chance to practice and do the tuning, it really makes you go to work to make sure you've got it right.

Q. Actually, either of you guys could address this. This feels early on, small sample size, like a very classic chase for the championship Hendrick 48 run. Is there something organizationally or institutionally that you guys have in terms of knowing how to manage these and being able to, whether it's mental coaches, taking everyone to school to teach them how to manage these ten races, is there something that you guys do and have always done well to manage a ten-race chase?

JEFF ANDREWS: Short of just saying we like to make life hard on ourselves through the early part of the year, it's really about -- Mr. Hendrick talks about this a lot, right, being in the people business. And in seasons like this, when arguably it's not been our year in the first three quarters of the season, you know, Cliff touched on it, it really takes an internal group there to lock arms, believe in each other, and not listen to the outside.

You know, we talk about it all the time that they never tear great companies down from the outside. It always starts on the inside.

So when things are not going your way and we're off on performance, and we know we're working hard inside and we're believing in each other -- and, you know, I commend crew chiefs and their commitment to each other and how they work together and just the shop. It's been a lot of hard work to get back to this point.

Right now we're going to take it one race at a time. But I think from what you have seen in the past, I go back to Mr. Hendrick. He's the one that comes in at the start of the chase, and he's the one that talks to us. You know, he just told us. He's like, Just go do your thing. I don't care.

Not that he doesn't care, but he's like, Don't put undue pressure on yourself. Do the best we can week in and week out and come home and go back and do the best you can the next weekend.

That's the motto we've adopted. Like I said, it's been hard work. We certainly would have wanted to have started the season with more wins and being more competitive, but we're just going to take this one race at a time and go back and tell everybody thank you at our shop in Charlotte, North Carolina.

There's a lot of work left to do, but just appreciate having the opportunity to get started the way we have in the chase.

CLIFF DANIELS: Honestly, I was just going to echo everything he said. I don't really have much of a different angle to bring to it.

Mr. Hendrick is just the linchpin for the culture, for the mindset. He called all the crew chiefs, this is probably five or six weeks before the chase, and gosh, we're just down and just grinding it out. He could tell everybody is just, you know, being hard on ourselves. Not on each other.

I'm pretty sure he called all four Crew Chiefs, all four drivers, like, Hey, man, all good, no pressure. If we go run 15th for the rest of the year, believe in you guys and know that you guys are going to do what it takes to recover from this and to learn how to improve our cars and performance and all the things.

So without that steady hand from him and that steady encouragement, I just don't see how our culture stays so well-connected and so positive. So big thank you to Mr. Hendrick for believing in us, for giving us the opportunity, coaching us when we need it.

He always says, when you are winning, you're not as good as you think you are, and when you are losing, you're not as bad as you think you are. He keeps us right in that lane. Very grateful for him.

JEFF ANDREWS: I should add congratulations as well to Mr. and Mrs. Hendrick on 50 years in the automobile business, right? What a great place to come celebrate a win for them in this month of September. Kansas market, a lot of dealerships here. So happy that we could get that done for them here in Kansas.

Q. Cliff, Kyle said during Chase media day that he actually has enjoyed this season maybe more than some others despite the struggles. I'm curious, did you?

CLIFF DANIELS: 100%, and it's so crazy to say. But, you know, look, I've been guilty of being too passionate at times or pushing too hard when things aren't going well, but I've got two kids now about 4 and 7. I've learned a thing about patience. Sometimes you just have to see the bigger picture.

I think our team has done that well. I think Kyle has done that well. I think I've done that well where we have actually enjoyed being behind, because when you're behind, you almost get a new opportunity to go look at the landscape of everything that makes up your approach. Is it your mindset? Is it your prep, your structure? Are there different things that you do executing the weekend that you get to improve?

As bad as this year started off for us, Bob, it almost turned into an opportunity to sit back and look at all areas. When you start to dial up all those areas every little bit, you know, one single thing may not matter, but when you stack ten of those things and keep moving forward, there's a lot of joy in that, there's a lot of fun in that.

Our team has done a great job of not getting discouraged emotionally. Yeah, it gets hard. We come back on Monday after a bad race, and everybody is sad and down. By the time we come on Tuesdays, even during the summer stretch when it was just miserable, everybody believed in each other, believed in the work that we were doing.

So there was a lot of fun in that. There was a lot of joy in that. There's a lot of resilience in that. I'm proud of our team for doing it, and Bob, it was fun.

Q. Austin Cindric pointed to the Chicago practice. He said because we had that long practice there, it made us feel good about coming here to another mile and a half and being good off the truck, and I'm curious if you felt the same way?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I think the Chicago practice was important for us, and I'm sure everybody, just because you had that full amount of practice time, I believe three sets of tires. The track went through some changes that day. I remember very vividly the track changing from the start of practice to the end, which is very typical for how an intermediate track changes during a race. We certainly learned a few things there.

We had a strong day going until it went south in Chicago. You know, honestly, Bob, when I look back at our approach at the beginning of the year for Vegas and Kansas early, we didn't really have our feet under us of knowing how far off we were. Was it a aero thing, the new body? We're still trying to learn that. Were our setups just dated? Was there things that we need to do work on? We've chipped away over the summer.

That Chicago weekend was important, and hopefully that's laying a good foundation for us now and moving forward.

Q. Cliff, obviously I know a lot of folks beyond Kyle dominating throughout today, but you guys didn't falter once at all on pit road either. How from your perspective did the pit crew execute off from start to finish, and do you feel that this was your best performance at least in terms of the chase?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yes, thank you. Our pit crew was phenomenal all day. I believe their fastest stop may have been an 8.5, and their slowest stop was an 8.7. Super tight in that window of consistency and speed.

Those guys, even when we haven't been great performance-wise on track at times this year and during the summer, they've been really strong on pit road all year. That is a group that has a lot of fun putting in the work, you know, working together, bringing just great, positive energy to every week and to every pit practice, to everything that they do.

For those guys to have a great day today, we would not have stayed in the race the way that we did without them.

Super proud of them for that performance, and I know that group very well. They're going to continue to put in the work to be strong moving forward. That's also really exciting.

Q. I know you mentioned the goal in the last stop was to be the first one in and to be ahead, but I know Kyle also started to fade around that 40-lap mark a little bit. Was there any hesitancy in the back of your mind of hoping maybe the 19 was going to run a little bit longer just so that he had a better advantage considering the point where he fell off?

CLIFF DANIELS: I knew we were going to have to pit when James did no matter what, and I was kind of hoping he was just going to keep going long so that we all wouldn't have to go 50 laps on our tires for the final run.

So, yeah, you know in that point when you're the lead car, you kind of have to play defense for the timing of the pit call. I had a feeling James was going to pull the trigger early.

Honestly, it came at about the time I think we expected it to. Maybe three to four laps short of the true split lap, if that makes sense. So, yeah, that's just one of those things you got to play defense when you can, and I was hopeful that he was going to go longer, but it worked out.