Larson leaves San Diego with momentum: 'It's giving me more confidence'

CORONADO, Calif. — Don’t ever count out Kyle Larson.

A third-place finish Sunday at Naval Base Coronado has the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion back inside the top five in the Cup Series points standings for the first time since May. And with a points reset lurking for The Chase in September, all he needs is a chance.

MORE: San Diego results | San Diego photos

Larson still trails series leader Tyler Reddick by 180 points with nine races remaining in NASCAR’s regular season, all in the midst of a 41-race winless streak that dates back to May 2025. But after leading laps in each of the last five races and collecting four top-five finishes in that span, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet is lurking, with hopes to pounce on Toyota’s success soon, as Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing have won 11 of 17 races in 2026 — including each of the last four.

“We’re definitely finding momentum, and our race cars are getting better,” Larson told NASCAR.com following Sunday’s race across the San Diego Bay. “It’s giving me more confidence, all the good things that you need. Just got to keep it going, you know? I feel like we’re still a bit off of being the best and wins becoming easier, but if we keep swinging, we’ll eventually get one, and hopefully with that, get more points and get a little bit further up.”

Despite a mid-spring swing that resulted in four finishes of 23rd or worse in a five-race span, crew chief Cliff Daniels believes his team never lost its momentum. That attitude is rooted in the No. 5 team’s resilience late in 2025, when Larson and Co. rallied without wins to win the championship in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. That mindset paid dividends as the team entered 2026 with a new Chevrolet body to optimize.

“By the end of 2025, we had already seen the [surge] of the Toyotas, and we weren’t the upper echelon of speed,” Daniels told NASCAR.com. “And I think that carried over into the early part of this year. At the same time, us just getting our arms wrapped around the body that I still think is good and fine, and we probably have had some overreaction to at times. So now we’re getting settled in on that. Our team has been very locked into our process this whole time. We’ve had some new guys come onto our team this year, and just trying to get everybody up to speed and locked in.

“Everybody’s really working well together. And at this point of the season, that’s when you want to be putting those top fives on the board, knowing that your team process is getting smooth, and everybody’s just chipping away. So we’re going to stay on that path, and we’ll see what lies ahead.”

Kyle Larson drives past the USS Carl Vinson at Naval Base Coronado in a NASCAR Cup Series event.

Larson led 11 of 75 laps around the San Diego street course Sunday and posted the day’s top average running position at 6.45, earning the fourth-most points of the race in the process. For a moment, victory was not just back on Larson’s mind but in his sights.

“It was a great day for us. Thought I had a good shot to win there,” Larson said. “Then the caution came out, and I still felt I got a good shot, but then the 23XI cars were just so fast there, so yeah, that was tough. But yeah, I mean, a super clean day for us on a challenging track. I’ll take it. Another top five and a good points day. We need those, and just happy to move on.”

Both Larson and Daniels lauded the milestone marquee race, NASCAR’s first on an active United States military base.

“It was awesome. I hope everybody enjoyed the race today,” Larson said as he approached the Cup garage — seemingly swallowed by the masses at once. “It was just a great atmosphere all weekend long, even from Friday. Friday, I think, it sounded like, was just open to the Navy base. But yeah, as you can see, the crowd’s crazy.”

From course design to event execution to the sacred ground at which NASCAR raced, Daniels heaped praise on all who coordinated Sunday’s motorsport achievement.

“Huge kudos to NASCAR, to the Navy, for everybody putting on this kind of event,” Daniels said. “We absolutely need to take care of our die-hard race fans with the North Wilkesboros and the Martinsvilles. We need to make sure we take care of all of our core fan base, but then at the same time, what we can showcase of our sport here, I think, is very special. I think it’s really important, and I think everybody made just for a great event here this weekend — the facility, the track, just the welcoming. Everything that we had here was really well done. So a lot of gratitude to our sport and to the Navy for making all that happen.”

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