Kyle Larson’s crew chief, Cliff Daniels, said that the strategy he used in the NASCAR All-Star Race “would probably be a ‘B'”.
Larson started on the pole in the All-Star race and won the first round. However, in Round 2, Larson was back in the field due to inversion and it seemed that he would not be able to continue his winning run.
Well, it turns out that a strategy before the race was the cause as per the crew chief, Daniels, who said:
“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. 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.
“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.”
Truck Series regular Austin Hill to run six Xfinity races this season
Larson started to gain positions as the race went on and he was able to start in the second position in Round 4. In a three-wide move by Brad Keselowski in the final round of the race, Larson got high up and took the lead from Keselowski with eight laps to go.
“We knew the way kind of the re-rack 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,” Daniels said.
“The one invert did help us out (after Round 2) 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.”