NASCAR.com catches up with Cliff Daniels at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course to discuss Kyle Larson advancing to the Round of 8 after starting in the rear.
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00:00 >> Here following the bank of America robo 400 with crew chief cliff Daniels.
00:04 The 5, an up and down day for you guys with Kyle Larson.
00:06 I know it worked out in your favor.
00:07 You're now advancing to the round of 8.
00:09 But an up and down day here at the robo.
00:11 >> Yeah, it was.
00:12 And, you know, so much of the up and down started down, of course, starting so far back
00:16 in the field.
00:18 But really I can't say enough about all the great folks at Hendrick motorsports and all
00:21 the guys on the 5 team.
00:24 We finished this car and loaded it up.
00:26 Way -- you know, too late last night, too early this morning, however you want to say
00:29 it.
00:30 It was a long night.
00:31 But everybody did a great job to get the car built, get it here and just work through the
00:34 race.
00:35 We knew the beginning of the race was probably going to start really slow for us.
00:38 And of course it did.
00:39 You know, we had to short stage 1 and trying to remember how stage 2 went.
00:43 I guess it ran almost to the end.
00:45 So we got stage points at the end of stage 2.
00:47 And then kind of had a hole to crawl out of in stage 3.
00:50 So I can't say that it was completely unexpected starting where we did.
00:53 We kind of knew there would be that, you know, slow start, hopefully a progression through
00:58 the field to get some stage points and then have to dig out of a hole again.
01:01 So Kyle did a great job.
01:03 Team did a great job.
01:04 And just really proud of the guys on the team.
01:06 >> We heard you feeding that information to your driver throughout the whole entire race
01:09 of who was leading, how many points you guys needed, where you needed to finish.
01:13 Did he ask for that information or were you volunteering that information to let him know,
01:16 hey, you got to go after it?
01:18 >> We kind of had an agreement before the race that, you know, the relevant information,
01:22 the things that I needed to provide him in the moment, you know, I would try to do the
01:26 best that I could.
01:28 I always hesitate because every time, you know, somebody pits and the cars cross the
01:32 line and you're trying to get lined up for a restart, it can certainly change the picture
01:36 of how things look.
01:37 So I was trying to make sure we had everything kind of buttoned up before a restart and knowing
01:41 what the points were, where we were.
01:43 You know, the pit cycle would kind of always calm down by that point.
01:47 And we had that agreement going into the race just to give him the perspective of, you know,
01:51 how urgent his moves needed to be for a restart.
01:54 So I think it was healthy communication and, you know, he did a great job of doing what
01:59 we needed to do today.
02:01 Of course, we wanted the Cinderella story of, you know, trying to win the race in a
02:03 backup car and all those things.
02:05 But our objective for today was just to make it through.
02:08 And luckily, we did on driver and owner points.
02:10 So all in all, not a bad day.
02:12 >> Well, go get some much-deserved rest and welcome to the round of eight.