NASCAR CUP SERIES: ALL-STAR RACE

June 13, 2021

Cliff Daniels

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the winning crew chief, crew chief of the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, and that's Cliff Daniels. Cliff, obviously I mentioned this to Kyle, but lots of rounds, lots of inversions but lots of passing, lots of strategy for you. Can you take us through the strategy side of this event and this unique format that was put in front of you?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I would -- honestly the grade I would give myself on the execution of the strategy would be probably a B because at the beginning of the race our car was too built for trying to have clean air and we didn't do a good job getting the balance right for what he needed in traffic early.

We had to work on the balance to get it closer so he could run in traffic better, and the second round did not go very well for us. So once we -- the guys buckled down, we threw a lot of changes at it, got the car a lot closer where he could be aggressive and try to set himself up for passes, which was cool to see, and then the way the points and everything worked out for us to start in the top 3 or 4 going into the fifth round worked out pretty well. Executing the pit stop was okay.

Big, big tip of the cap to the 9 team, congrats to those guys on winning the pit crew deal, and they had a phenomenal pit stop, and had it not worked out like that, I don't know that the 2 would have been a factor the way they were, and then of course Brad did a really good job of keeping his car kind of in the mix to kind of break up what we had going on with our Hendrick cars.

And then the last restart Kyle was just absolutely phenomenal. I don't even think there was a lane up there from what I saw, and he put it up there and it stuck.

Really cool day for our Hendrickcars.com, Chevy. Proud of all the guys. Just a cool day.

Q. I'm just curious, how do you strategize in a race like that? What is the strategy there?

CLIFF DANIELS: Our best strategy going in was to try to have a car that could pass better than we did at the early part of the race, which is why I'm not giving myself a very good grade to start the day.

We knew the way kind of the rerack of the lineup was going to work out, you had to be able to pass, so it took us a little while to get our car where it could do that, otherwise the one invert did help us out when we just weren't as good as we needed to be, and that was certainly no intention on our part to try to lag back to get the invert. It just kind of played out that way, and of course having a car to take advantage of starting on the pole the way we did and get the first win or whatever of the first round was important to just kind of help minimize the way the points worked out, I believe.

That was about all we could do.

Q. When he's restarting third, I think, before the final stage, are you feeling good, or are you thinking it's going to be a tough road to hoe?

CLIFF DANIELS: I don't know that I was hedging my bet one way or the other. Never bet against yourself, and I kind of knew Kyle could get it done in that position. My confidence was lacking a little bit in kind of what we had given him with the issues we had in traffic earlier, so I was kind of crossing my fingers that our adjustments worked out, and we had to get pretty aggressive with the car in some adjustments that we made.

Fingers were crossed that the adjustments were going to be okay and the car was going to be under him, and I knew that he was just going to make whatever move he could to get to the lead, and he did, which was really cool to watch.

Q. What does it feel like now, this team, every time you show up, you've got a car good enough and your driver is giving you everything he's got to make you -- basically this team is on a roll that we haven't seen in quite some time. What does it feel like from your perspective, a team perspective to be on this kind of a roll, this kind of success?

CLIFF DANIELS: More than anything just thankful. When I walked in today, I was talking to my car chief Jesse, and I remember years ago back in the 2000s I was working on a start-and-park Xfinity team and I was a mechanic and getting through tech was a struggle if it was a hot day.

To be in a position now where we have such an amazing team, we have the support of Chevrolet and Mr. H and Hendrickcars.com, everything single guy on our team is bought in. They're strong. A team is really only as strong as its weakest link and we just don't have any. All the guys on our team are racers and they live, eat and breathe this stuff. They put in so much prep time at the shop, and of course all teams do, and I think what is helping us right now is just the chemistry.

This is a tough stretch that we're on in the summer months. Everyone is going through it with the backup cars and multiple-day shows that we're about to have quite a few in a row.

You know, it just takes a lot of different things, chemistry-wise, and then of course the timing of what we have. Chevrolet the last three or four years, we've been off, and we had to get to work. Very thankful for what we have with the Chevrolet body now, with Hendrick Power that we have now. There's a lot of good things that have kind of come together for us that trickled in last year, and Alan and Chase certainly showed that at the end of 2020, to their credit, and fortunately we've been able to take a lot of what they proved to us and to the world and keep building on it and make it better.

Q. Any personal vindication? I know when you guys were struggling to win with Jimmie and whatnot, a lot of people called you into question a little bit. Do you feel any personal vindication?

CLIFF DANIELS: I mean, to a degree, yes. One thing that's for sure, if it weren't for Jimmie, I would not be in this seat right now, so I'm forever grateful to him.

I think a lot of the leadership that he taught me and taught the guys on our team of how to be tough when things aren't going your way, and he knew that the last few years our cars just weren't quite right. We had a great group back at the shop and again with Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports that dug deep and knew we had a hole to climb out of. Jimmie was behind us the whole time to stay strong, and of course being in my position, I did have self-doubts of our performance last year and what we could potentially do this year.

We knew we had built a really good team; a lot of that is credit to Jimmie. The guys on this team really bought into him as a driver for all those years, and he kind of helped bring some of us up, including myself from years ago from when we were younger and gave us an opportunity, and we're just trying to make the best of it.

Q. You talked about the fact that you guys have been really successful and how that's been great. What does it mean to you when you hear a lot of people now saying that the No. 5 is the championship favorite as we head into the second half of the year?

CLIFF DANIELS: It's a great position to be in, and it's really cool to hear, but facts on the table, and honestly Alan Gustafson has taught me this a lot, it is a long summer and it is a long year. There were some things that happened to the 9 in 2020 if you look at the championship run that they went on, where the summertime they had a couple tough moments, and they knew it was a long year and they kind of regained their strength and executed at the end of the year that they could end it strong, and they did.

Really that's on us now to make sure we get through the stretch of the hot summer months strong and everybody is still maintaining the good chemistry that we have now within our company, within our team, and take that into the playoffs. We all know that this is the Cup Series. Things go in cycles.

While we have the cycle going our way now, when we get into the end of the summer and into the playoffs, we need to keep it going because our competition is certainly not taking their foot off the gas, so we're going to keep ours on it, too.

Q. Looking at tonight in particular with the format that NASCAR went with, what are your thoughts on how they chose to go with this format and how it played out?

CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I definitely thought it was interesting coming in and we've seen so many different formats of the All-Star Race play out. I thought it was really interesting, now in retrospect, how much just really the flow of the race kind of changed things I thought because we got stuck in traffic back there with the 24 and some of those other guys and kind of got down on ourselves that we may not have a shot to be up front at the end.

And then the next round with the next invert, some of the guys that were at the front that we thought were going to be really strong and they went to the back, I think it was 18 and maybe the 9, they didn't make it very far up there that round. So you really saw just kind of a big mix within the field.

I don't know, I've never been asked about All-Star format races, so I don't know what I would say to change it at this point, but luckily it worked out today.

THE MODERATOR: Cliff, congratulations and good luck next week in Nashville.