CONCORD, N.C. - Just like taxes and death, Kyle Larson was inevitable at Homestead-Miami Speedway this past weekend.
And one would think, after a victory, all would be champagne and roses in the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet camp.
But Cliff Daniels hasn't overseen 24 victories and a NASCAR Cup Series championship in the past four-plus seasons with Larson behind the wheel by standing pat and resting on laurels. And though the end result in South Florida on Sunday was great, there were certainly lessons to be learned and possibly changes to be made.
For instance, Larson's speed was certainly on the long runs, as evidenced by a final, long sprint to the finish in which he picked off several cars, one-by-one in the closing laps before finally clearing teammate Alex Bowman for the lead with just seven circuits to go. But in focusing on the long run, a strategy which ultimately paid off thanks to an extended green-flag stint at the end, sacrifices had to be made on the front end and on restarts and that could've been costly had a late yellow flown.
And that's something Daniels is fully aware of and will examine closely the next time the Cup Series heads back to Homestead.
"To do it all over again, maybe would've done it differently because we were certainly exposed and really, not great on a short run," Daniels said in an episode of Hendrick Motorsports' "Winner's Seat" on Tuesday afternoon. "But we knew Kyle was going to do his thing on be great on a long run, that is where we had kind of laid our base for car setup and our package. So, certainly, a few things we need to evaluate there before we go back to Homestead, if that's where we want to be in that space, because it was tough on restarts when we're vulnerable and getting passed to have confidence knowing it's all going to come back to you at the end of a run.
"It was good to see it play out the way it did. I'm fearful if a caution had come out late, we would've been too vulnerable. So, we're certainly going to evaluate that and work on that in the future."
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Also, in signature 5-team style, the event wasn't without its adversity.
With caution waving in the second stage, Larson was contacted on pit road during pit stops, knocking a hole in the left side rocker panel. Almost assuredly, any aerodynamic damage would be costly at Homestead-Miami, especially with as precise a line that Larson runs against the wall in both turns, every lap.
So, Daniels was faced with a dilemma - leave Larson on the race track in hopes that the damage wouldn't be great enough to significantly affect performance, or pit, fix the damage and sacrifice track position. Ultimately, though Daniels and Larson agreed the dustup compromised the car a bit, a decision to gamble and stay out paid off.
"I was a little of unsure how big it was - was there any damage to the fender? Was it going to rub the tire?" Daniels recalled. "You don't know the full context of it until you get enough pictures. Well, pictures and hard to come by because of the photographer locations and we're trying to look at it with binoculars. Meanwhile, we've clicked off one or two laps under yellow and the field is coming to one to go.
"I was a little back-and-forth in my communication. I don't know now if we'd done anything different other than maybe I could've made it less confusing. We had the hole in the rocker, certainly it didn't do anything to improve our car - took speed away, took grip away, took downforce away - but at that time, I don't know pitting to fix it and having to restart deep in the 20s or 30s would've played out great for us to have to rebound all the way. I'm certain we could've rebounded to the top 10. Would we have had a shot after that? I'm not sure.
"It's a tough situation and there's no owner's manual or script on how to handle that. Each situation is certainly unique."
Ultimately, the victory was significant to be sure: It punched Larson's ticket into the Cup Series playoffs and gave him his 30th career victory. And all of that is well and good.
But now in his seventh season as a crew chief, Daniels has learned that evaluation based on results alone can be misleading and even detrimental. Now, he assesses performance regardless of finish.
"My expectation now is not the outcome, not to win. I no longer expect that," Daniels said. "There was a certain time in my career that's where my focus and expectation was; now my expectation is just the team function and the process and performance of the team.
"Adjustments on the car, calling strategy, having clean pit stops, getting on and off pit road clean - if we stack all those things the right way, hopefully the outcome takes care of itself."
As for grading the 2025 season thus far and where his team is through six races, The No. 5 pit boss believes his team is where it needs to be and neither Sunday's victory or a potential bad run is going to sway that thought.
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"We know there's an ebb and a flow to the season. Certainly, if you look back to the last two-to-three years of our team - we laugh about it - we call it the heartbeat of the 5 team. We have finishes that are high followed by another one that's low," Daniels said. "I think momentum can be a real thing in the sport, but we try to decouple our momentum as a team from necessarily the result.
"The momentum we capture as a team is in our process - how we prepare, our weekly cadence, our flow, communication, just the way we're always building to try and get better week-by-week. I think that's more crucial than any evaluation of your result. If we're performing as a team and we're growing and doing all the right things along the way, hopefully the results take care of themselves.
"I'm pleased with where we are in that part of our process. It's not going to stop, it's going to continue, we're going to keep learning week by week. If we finish 40th the next 10 weeks or we win the next 10 races, to me, that is a totally independent conversation from how we're conducting business as a team."