Kyle Larson and crew chief Cliff Daniels relished winning the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship together. But on the precipice of the 2026 season, the pair is already eager to start working on a third championship. “Offseasons are fun and all that to get refreshed,” Larson said Thursday at Hendrick Motorsports, “but then as it approaches the new season, I just get really antsy and ready to go and look forward to being around everybody again and getting into the meetings and preparation and race weekends and all of that that goes into it.” MORE: Clash weekend schedule | Clash format Larson will get his wish this weekend as the Cup Series returns to Bowman Gray Stadium for the Cook Out Clash on Sunday (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The 2025 offseason was a bit different than years past, with the NASCAR Awards banquet held in the days immediately following the season finale rather than weeks later. “This year, it was crazy hectic for a week,” Larson said, “but then once that week was done, it was like, boom, you’re moved on to the next year. So it’s made the offseason feel longer, I think, for me, and that’s been something I’ve enjoyed.” In his time away from the Cup car, Larson was back at the Chili Bowl and continued his dirt-racing prowess overseas in Australia. The focus resets to 2026 now, retooled for another title run as Larson tries to become the first back-to-back champion since Jimmie Johnson’s unprecedented run of five straight titles from 2006 through 2010. Daniels is proud of what his group overcame en route to the 2025 title — capped on Jan. 23 at Hendrick Motorsports with the reception of the Goodyear gold car replica of their title-winning machine. But neither Daniels nor his team members are ones to rest on yesteryear’s results. “That accomplishment is great to have, but at the same time, every year presents its own set of challenges and circumstances,” Daniels said. “And of course, with The Chase format this year, it’s all kind of a different look. So what we can take from one year to another is how we build our daily process, how we execute, how we perform, how we communicate, all of those things, and apply it to whatever comes our way this season.”
The team’s journey to title No. 2 in 2025 was quite different than its first in 2021. The inaugural go-around featured a 10-win campaign — and an All-Star Race win to boot — with a string of dominance that led to championship glory. Last year’s battle was more arduous. Larson’s three wins all came before Memorial Day, finishing third in the regular-season standings before rallying through the elimination-style playoff system without netting a postseason victory and winning the Bill France Cup at Phoenix Raceway with a third-place finish. The game changes in 2026 as NASCAR returns to The Chase, a 10-race championship format that will decide the champion by points earned throughout the final slate. That’s no worry for Daniels, who pointed to last year’s experience as a helpful proving ground. “Even thinking back to our season in 2025, a lot of what kept us in the hunt for the regular-season title fight was the fact that we had some really good races going until a mechanical failure or a late crash, where we did score a lot of stage points, and that kind of kept us in the hunt,” Daniels said. “So we’ve lived it a little bit. We’ve seen it. And now, of course, it’s going to be more of a highlight of that, where you’ve got to be there during the stages and put a whole race together. “So again, I think it’s going to benefit our team, and we’ve just got to make sure that how we strategize our races, how we execute, that we’re getting those points along the way. And of course, now with extra points for the race winner, I think that’s a pretty big deal as well of just boosting what that points momentum can be.”RELATED: The Chase 101: How it works Indeed, race winners will now receive 55 points instead of the previous 40, placing a high priority on winning despite the points-based format. Larson enters the year on a 24-race winless streak, his longest since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021, but remains confident he and his team will be celebrating again sooner than later. Coupled with the return of The Chase, Larson is optimistic for what lies ahead in 2026. “I think probably all of us were happy to hear of the format change,” Larson said. “I mean, I think your championship contenders in the playoff format are gonna be the same championship contenders in this format. It’s just a larger sample size is gonna be much nicer. A lot can happen in a three-race mini-series that can take you out of it. And then, yeah, from the championship to come down to Phoenix, it’s just there are some teams that are better equipped for that style track. So, yeah, just the larger sample size is gonna be better, and I think would suit Hendrick Motorsports better.”