🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Preview 🚗
🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Preview 🚗
The cars are back on the track and ready to race for the championship. Here's all you need to know for the new season.
The Super Bowl of football has come and gone — now it’s time for the Super Bowl of motorsports to take center stage, with the Daytona 500 jump-starting the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series schedule on Sunday.
In preparation for the new season, I’m going to run through all of the full-time team lineups, listing each driver — marking new additions in orange — and his crew chief, along with his Adjusted Points index (Pts+, a metric scaled where the Cup Series average is 100). For the latter number, I’m listing it for last season — including breaking down quarterly performance across the schedule (Q1-Q4) — as well as the previous two seasons, and giving a weighted average of those figures that should serve as a projection of sorts for 2024.
With all of that out of the way, let’s look at the teams in vague order of predicted quality, starting with…
Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
With a Cup Series-high 10 total wins, 42 Top 5s and 67 Top 10s, Hendrick was the best team of 2023, even if both of its Championship 4 drivers (Kyle Larson and William Byron) came up just short in the season finale. There’s no reason to think Hendrick won’t be as much or more of a force this year, with perennial title contender Chase Elliott presumably driving a full season after last year’s injury/suspension-marred campaign. Larson has been the best driver of the past few seasons by Pts+, and Byron made a big leap into that echelon last season as well. The biggest question mark is Alex Bowman, who showed a lot of promise as recently as a few years ago, but has regressed in recent seasons and was mostly mediocre (even when healthy) in 2023. At age 31, time is running out for Bowman to reach his potential in the 48 car.
Joe Gibbs Racing (Toyota)
Gibbs gave Hendrick a run for their money in terms of overall team performance last year, and even led all organizations in the traditional point standings. Denny Hamlin should once again be among the favorites to win the championship, potentially ending his reign as the Best Driver to Never Win a Title. He drove well enough to win for most of the season, but was narrowly ousted from the playoffs in Round of 8. Christopher Bell actually made the Championship 4, but an early crash at Phoenix ruined his chances. He and Martin Truex Jr. should both be in the mix again, although Truex needs to move past the bizarre late-season malaise that produced surprisingly subpar results throughout the playoffs. One to watch is 21-year-old Ty Gibbs, who improved dramatically as the 2023 season went on and should have the equipment to make a serious playoff bid in 2024.
Team Penske (Ford)
After years of his results not quite matching his potential, Ryan Blaney finally broke through in 2023 as a Cup Series champion. Along with Larson and Byron, he will go into 2024 as the betting co-favorite as well, though in many ways he was fortunate to win the title by driving his best at the end of the season and making the most of NASCAR’s convoluted playoff system. (By traditional points, he would have finished a distant sixth in the standings.) Of course, teammate Joey Logano had a version of the same thing play out as he won the 2022 title; maybe it’s just a Penske thing? Despite a down — yet still solid — performance in 2023, Logano should be a threat again if not simply because he is well suited to the tracks at the end of the playoffs. The weak link of this team is Austin Cindric, who won the 2022 Daytona 500 and hasn’t done much since. He’s still only 25, but he desperately needs a more competitive performance in 2024.
RFK Racing (Ford)
Roush Fenway Keselowski was one of the feel-good surprise teams of 2023, following up a mid-pack debut season for Brad Keselowski as driver-owner in 2022 with a campaign that saw both cars be consistent fixtures up front most weekends. Chris Buescher continued his mid-career breakout by winning three races (including back-to-back ones at Richmond and Michigan) and posting career-best numbers across the board. Can he repeat his trip to the Round of 8, though? Ironically, none of RFK’s wins since Keselowski joined on belong to the former Cup Series champ and future Hall of Famer, but Brad K. has clearly influenced this team’s rebirth into a competitive outfit. He will be a threat to win races again this season. Veteran David Ragan will compete for RFK in the Daytona 500 as well.
23XI Racing (Toyota)
In its third season of existence, the Michael Jordan/Denny Hamlin-owned 23XI established itself as one of the better teams on the Cup Series grid. Tyler Reddick made his move to 23XI after a not-quite-amicable divorce from Richard Childress, and he proved he could be the flagship driver for a championship-contending team. After a midseason lull, he was one of the best drivers in the second half of the schedule, advancing to the Round of 8 before running out of steam at Martinsville. It was also gratifying to see Bubba Wallace make his first career playoff appearance in 2023. (This coming after I shouted from the rooftops last season that, yes, Bubba is actually a good driver!) Wallace isn’t perfect — he needs to improve on matching his finishes to the quality of his starts, and he still crashes out of an above-average number of races — but he proved he could be a presence at the front of the pack for most of last season.
Trackhouse Racing (Chevrolet)
Early last season, I sang the praises of Trackhouse Racing as a new, exciting disruptor of a team on the Cup Series scene. But 2023 did not end up being as good for Trackhouse as 2022 had been. Ross Chastain was embroiled in controversy for most of the early part of the schedule, then tailed off some as he perhaps tried to rein in his aggressive driving. He still won a couple of races and made the playoffs, but he was eliminated in the Round of 12 and his overall performance was down. Meanwhile, Daniel Suarez was one of the most disappointing drivers of 2023. At age 32, he goes into this season with a lot of motivation to prove that 2022’s seeming breakout was not merely a fluke performance.
Richard Childress Racing (Chevrolet)
It was a very odd year for RCR in 2023. On the one hand, Kyle Busch’s arrival (predictably) brought the team a very competitive star driver with a lot left to prove. On the other hand, however, Busch faded after a strong start, and the team ended up with fewer wins and a worse average finish than it did with Reddick in the fold in 2022. It didn’t help matters that Austin Dillon had a horrible season, his worst as a full-timer in the Cup Series. I don’t believe that Dillon is as bad as he looked in 2023, and he has rebounded from bad years before (see 2020). But as eternally youthful as Dillon will always be in my mind, he’ll actually be 34 this season — he needs to hold up his end of the bargain to make the fabled 3 car fast again, while Busch continues to do his job holding off Father Time.
Kaulig Racing (Chevrolet)
Kaulig solidified a good year in 2023 when A.J. Allmendinger won at the Charlotte Roval, marking his second victory for the team since 2021. It came too late for Allmendinger to make the playoffs, but he was solid for the majority of last season. He’ll try to maintain that form in the No. 16 car for most of the 2024 schedule, with part-time starts by road-racing sensation (and Chicago winner) Shane van Gisbergen and Josh Williams sprinkled in. And in the No. 31, Daniel Hemric makes his return to a full-time Cup Series ride after finishing 8th in the Xfinity Series last year.
JTG-Daugherty Racing (Chevrolet)
JTG-Daugherty rivaled RFK for top feel-good status after Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500 in surprise fashion to start the 2023 season. The victory immediately locked Stenhouse into the playoff field… but he never built too much on the early win, mostly failing to be competitive over the rest of the season and especially in the playoffs. Overall, though, Stenhouse did better than his dismal 2022 showing, and he is usually strong on plate tracks, so you can’t rule out another victorious underdog drive through the Daytona chaos.
Front Row Motorsports (Ford)
Both of Front Row’s victories in the past seven seasons belong to Michael McDowell, who won the Daytona 500 in 2021 and then locked himself into the playoffs with a shock win at the Indy Road Course last season. McDowell peaked at exactly the right time for a playoff push, making the Round of 16 with that victory, though his overall performance was actually down from 2022 (the only season since 2020 when he didn’t win a race, go figure). No. 2 driver Todd Gilliland spent most of last season deep in the pack, though he did score four Top 10s. Rookie Kaz Grala is set to drive for Front Row in the Daytona 500 as well.
Stewart-Haas Racing (Ford)
Once one of the premier organizations in all of NASCAR, Stewart-Haas has fallen on hard times in recent years. Things will probably get even worse in 2024, with former Cup Series champ Kevin Harvick and steady veteran Aric Almirola both leaving after last season. In Harvick’s place, Josh Berry will drive the No. 4 after showing at least some promise (99 Pts+) filling in for Chase Elliott at Hendrick last season. Almirola’s spot is filled by Noah Gragson after he had the season from hell (both on and off the track) in 2023. The other two rides belong to Chase Briscoe — who is solid enough, but trying to recover his above-average form of 2022 — and Ryan Preece — best known for the scariest crash of 2023 at Daytona. This team’s struggles might get equally tough to watch.
Legacy Motor Club (Toyota)
In theory, Legacy has a surprising amount of upside. Erik Jones has enjoyed success in the past (even with a version of this team in 2022, much less earlier in Gibbs equipment), part-timer Jimmie Johnson is a legendary seven-time champ and John Hunter Nemechek is still an up-and-coming driver after last year’s No. 4 Xfinity Series finish. But I’m wary of expecting too much out of them this season, after a terrible 2023 that saw them notch only seven Top 10s and a single Top 5 across all of their cars. Even a return to the relatively modest mid-pack form of team predecessor Petty GMS Motorsports in 2022 — which featured a win by Jones at Darlington — would qualify as a success.
Rick Ware Racing (Ford)
The primary lineup for Ware will feature former Kaulig driver Justin Haley in the 51, after an unending procession of racers were behind that wheel in 2023 (following Cody Ware’s suspension for allegations of domestic violence). Haley has been solid in the past when given the opportunity, posting an average finish 3% better than the Cup Series norm in 2022. The other seat belongs primarily to rookie Kaz Grala, who was decent (17th) in the Xfinity Series last year. Riley Herbst (who finished 13th in the same Xfinity field) and potentially the younger Ware will also be in the mix, as the latter was reinstated by NASCAR in December.
Spire Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Spire has been slowly building a program — emphasis on slowly — over the past few seasons, fielding their most competitive three-car lineup ever last season by average finish and Pts+. You could do worse than a lineup of Corey LaJoie, Carson Hocevar and perennial Truck Series contender (and 2022 champ) Zane Smith. But to give a sense of how much more ground this team has left to cover, it’s still looking for its first podium finish of any sort since Justin Haley won the 2019 summer race at Daytona.
Wood Brothers Racing (Ford)
The iconic Wood Bros. No. 21 has seen better days, with lone driver Harrison Burton producing just four Top 10s and a Top 5 in 72 starts over the past two seasons. This team was more competitive with Matt DiBenedetto and even Paul Menard a few seasons earlier, but Burton is still only 23 years old and just a couple of years removed from back-to-back eighth-place Xfinity finishes. There’s also a good history of young drivers developing out of the Wood Bros. program even after the glory days were over — it produced Elliott Sadler, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Trevor Bayne and Ryan Blaney, among others. Burton will potentially be a contending driver someday… just not for this team, most likely.
Filed under: NASCAR