AVONDALE, Ariz. - In the race car, Kyle Larson was sure he was out of the hunt in terms of the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Hendrick Motorsports team owner Rick Hendrick and vice chairman Jeff Gordon each admitted in postrace press conferences, they too had all but left the No. 5 team for dead.
But crackling through the radio static was a steady and believing voice throughout it all. The same one that has helped guide the squad through an especially tumultuous season. The same one that refused to give in no matter how bleak the situation on Sunday or in 2025 became.
And in the end, crew chief Cliff Daniels was right. He was right all along.
His never surrender attitude and messaging reached its ultimate payoff on Sunday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway as Larson overcame a blown tire and a one-lap deficit to rally to a most improbable title, the team's second and the organization's 15th.
"He works so hard. He puts in so much effort, not only on this team but on himself personally," Larson gushed during a postrace interview. "We all want it so bad for ourselves but even more for him and his leadership and how hard he works at it.
"I knew all four of (the Championship 4 drivers') cars would be pretty equal this week. I knew our teams were pretty comparable. But I knew I had Cliff Daniels and that's something nobody else had."
On the surface, history will show Daniels' two-tire call on the team's last two pit stops were his biggest contribution to Sunday's race win. But as pivotal as that decision was in the outcome, his steadfastness in the face of doubt was contagious all season long. And though others doubted, including several within the team, Daniels maintained that the No. 5 team was far from done.
"I heard Cliff going, 'We're OK here guys.' I don't know exactly what he meant by that because we were running out of laps," Gordon said. "You can just never say it's over. Never quit and never count out Cliff Daniels and Kyle Larson and this number five team.
"This sums up their entire season, really. This whole race was like their entire season and you've just got to love that fight."
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With changing team personnel, the death of Hendrick Motorsports director of racing communications and long-time Larson public relations rep, Jon Edwards and numerous other challenges behind the scenes, the 2025 season will go down as a year's worth of overcoming hurdles, at least for those in the know.
"We've had things going on away from the racetrack where we've had to overcome obstacles, sometimes even tragedy, and work through a lot of things together," Daniels said. "To me, there's a lot of beauty in that, of a team banding together the way we have this season.
"That was really showcased today. I have to acknowledge that it was a pretty ugly day for us. At times we were up front, kind of in the top three, a little bit in the mix. Certainly (Denny Hamlin) was better than us. I think we were beat on raw pace today. After we had the flat tire, there wasn't a lot of good things coming our way at the time.
"We knew we would have more shots for pit stops and for restarts maybe mix it up a bit. The way that the team stuck together and continued to believe in each other, Kyle continued to believe that if we just had a shot, we could close it out. That was what was put on display today."
Even within the race, those themes prevailed again. The first of two, two-tire calls left Larson a little on the fence but, as it turned out, he learned some valuable lessons in that tire deficit stint that gave him the confidence to be able to execute another during a green-white-checkered overtime restart that delivered a championship to the No. 5 team.
"The first two-tire call, I didn't know if it would be the right call. I'll be honest, I didn't have as much confidence that time," Larson said. "We just ran a long run, I was struggling. I thought with this softer tire, the lefts maybe were going to be not as strong as what they ended up being.
"Then when I went through that first restart, was kind of a ways back from (Chase Briscoe), just throttled up, and I got back alongside of him, ultimately passed him. Yeah, I knew if we got another caution, give it any laps, that two tires in my mind is going to be a no-brainer. I hoped that Cliff was thinking the same way."
Daniels would admit that initially, he wasn't. In fact, he gave credit for the first two-tire call to the team's engineers.
But among the many lessons to be learned from this season, Daniels said the adapting and developing the willingness to deviate from plans proved to be key in the year's defining moment.
"If you draw your season plans on the whiteboard, you don't include all of the things that happened to us this summer. You don't include the struggle, all the challenges," Daniels said. "There was just no other way for us to get toughened up, gritty enough, determined enough to show that level of perseverance. That is what the team showcased today.
"It's far more than just me, than Kyle. It's all the men on the team, the support system they have at home, the hours and the grind and the resiliency to be able to show what we showed throughout the season, then especially to end the race today.
"I'm very grateful to be part of a team and an organization and a group of people that all share that belief."