Cliff Daniels about what went into Kyle Larson with the fastest shot bonus in Mexico while stepping off

Long Pound, Dad. – Crew Chief Cliff Daniels admits he was ready to park Kyle Larson’s car when there wasn’t enough rounds in Mexico this weekend in Mexico. It was Larson who led the complaint to stay in the race.

This led to Larson, who finished 36th and achieved the bonus point for the fastest round.

One point can make a difference – Larson lost the usual seasonal championship last year.

But it was not necessarily the impetus for Larson that remained in the race.

Larson spent a good part of last week’s race in the garage after his car was damaged when Kyle Busch slipped and collected several others early in the event.

Daniels said Larson’s car sustained suspension damage. It can be replaced under the damaged vehicle policy of Nascar. The team also had what Daniels called a ‘severely bent’ leading shock. It could not be replaced.

When Larson returned more than 20 laps behind the leaders, Daniels said he would keep an eye on when they reached a point where they could no longer take positions.

“So we waited up to three rounds just because I’m honest, I still have a little PTSD from Darlington, where we finally affected the outcome of the race completely accidentally,” Daniels told NBC Sports to Pocono Raceway on Saturday.

Larson’s car was damaged earlier this season in an accident on cloth 4 on Darlington. His crew recovered in the garage for about two hours and he earned one position. Larson ran more than 150 laps behind the leaders to stay away from Tyler Reddick and Ryan Blaney as they rushed to the lead. But Bubba Wallace came in the back of Larson’s car and spun him, causing a caution that changed the outcome of the race, allowing Denny Hamlin to win.

Denny Hamlin returns to the series this weekend after being missing last weekend’s race in Mexico for the birth of his son.

With Darlington in mind, Daniels said he called Larson in the garage in Mexico last weekend when there were no more positions for them to earn.

Daniels said Larson told him, “Hey man, are we done? I don’t really want to do DNF. I just want to keep running.”

“I’m like, in order, if we’re going to be there, how can we make it worth it?” Daniels said. “I knew Kyle wanted a clean track and wanted to go quickly.

“Finally, we started throwing adjustments to the car, tires and just doing a lot of things. It was a wonderful team practice of just the pit stop reps for backward pit stops. There was value in it. We changed the air pressure a lot. There was value in it. We made adjustments on the car. There was value in it.

Daniels noted that the repairs made by the crew in Mexico were other than what they had to do with the car in Darlington.

“Darlington was a very different experience than Mexico, because in Darlington it was almost cosmetic body on the car,” Daniels said. ‘We had to replace the leading bumps structure, we had to do a lot to put the nose back on and get on the car. It was all unique to it. There really was no suspension damage in Darlington.

‘Complete opposite in Mexico. It was all suspension damage with very minimal to the body. Procedurally, there were a few things we wore as a team from what the Darlington type process was in the Mexico process to communicate how to communicate who is going where, who attacks which area.

“But it’s crazy how much we still learn, because it was so different, just a lot of suspension and what we had to replace in Mexico. The value of me you just don’t know before you have the moment in the play -off match. ‘