Kyle Larson will have a new group of pit-crew members servicing his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in Sunday’s race at Darlington Raceway.
Scheduled to service Larson’s ride this week are front tire changer Jafar Hall, rear changer Mike Moss, jackman Eric Ludwig, tire carrier Allen Stallings and fueler Brandon Harder. Harder is the only returning member to the No. 5 team that serviced the car one week ago at Martinsville Speedway.
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The new quartet of members comes from Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevrolet, where they began the year with driver Justin Haley. Hendrick Motorsports supplies pit crews to Spire’s three-car outfit. The foursome of pit athletes that previously pitted for Larson will now pit Haley’s car starting at Darlington: front changer Blaine Anderson, rear changer Calvin Teague, jackman Brandon Johnson and tire carrier RJ Barnette.
Hall and Ludwig, now officially members of the No. 5 team, have already pitted for Larson in 2025. The duo was called over to the 2021 Cup champion’s team for two races in March — Phoenix and Las Vegas — when Johnson and Anderson were sidelined with a two-race suspension after the No. 5 Chevrolet lost a right-front wheel at Circuit of The Americas.
“We‘ve looked at a lot of different factors of really not what the old (No.) 5 group was doing wrong, but what this other group was doing right,” Cliff Daniels, crew chief of the No. 5 team, told NBC Sports. “We‘ve been working really hard within our pit department of just pushing, pushing the edge of performance and whatever that takes to keep moving the needle. Certainly, a lot of teams are performing at a very high level on pit road.”
Larson enters Sunday’s race second in the points standings, 16 points behind Hendrick teammate William Byron. A winner at Homestead-Miami on March 23, Larson has strung together four consecutive top-10 finishes since the costly error at COTA and has collected four top fives and five top 10s in seven races.
Daniels said the team’s previous pit crew had been “solid” over the past few weeks.
“But we weren‘t outstanding over the top of times,” he told NBC Sports. “… Over the course of this season and over the course of the end of last season, the incoming group has really been putting up really fast times, very consistent, performing at a high level.”
Anderson, Barnette, Teague, Johnson and Harder had been pitting the No. 5 car together since the summer of 2022. The trio of Barnette, Harder and Teague had worked together since 2010 — 15 years ago — with driver Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus on their way to a record fifth straight NASCAR Cup Series championship.
RELATED: History of the No. 5 crew heading into 2023 finale
Larson will start Sunday’s Goodyear 400 in 19th place, with Haley 21st on the starting grid at 3 p.m. ET (FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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