2019 NASCAR Predictions: Revisited

NASCAR season is over and this year Thanksgiving is not at the doorstep. It is kind of nice to have this week until the holiday.

Anyway, now we get to look back. Predictions were made 11 months ago and we need to see how those predictions fared. Were some spot on? Were others completely wrong? Let's take a look.

1. We will have at least eight different race winners in the first 16 races
Wrong! After four different winners in the first four races, there were only six different winners in the first 16 races.

The season started with Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske dominating with the two teams combining to win the first nine races and 15 of the first 16. Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 with Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano taking the next two races before Kyle Busch won the fourth race of the season.

Through four races, I was feeling good about this prediction but the only other new winners in the next 12 races were Martin Truex, Jr. and Chase Elliott.

Kevin Harvick and Alex Bowman each had a shot at Kansas but Harvick got a penalty after leading 103 laps and Bowman was second to Keselowski. Jimmie Johnson had a strong Texas race, leading 60 laps, the second-most but finished fifth. Ryan Blaney led the most laps at Bristol, 156 laps, but finished fourth.

There were opportunities but a few drivers were not able to break through.

2. Aric Almirola and Austin Dillon each finish at least five championship positions worse than they did in 2018
Correct! Almirola dropped from a gracious fifth in 2018 to 14th and Dillon dropped from 13th to 21st.

Almirola did not win a race in 2019 but he had only one fewer top five finish, having three in 2019 after having a career-high four in 2018. He did have five fewer top ten finishes, dropping from 17 to 12.

Dillon did not win a race in 2019, did not have a top five finish, had six top ten finishes and won three pole positions.

3. Kyle Larson wins at least four races
Wrong! Not even close. Larson had one victory, a great performance in the autumn Dover race.

Outside of that, this season was much different for Larson despite getting a victory and a career-best championship finish. He had fewer top five finishes and top ten finishes than 2018 but he went from ninth to sixth in the championship. The way NASCAR resets drivers that are eliminated from each round of the playoffs does make the championship finish a little skewed. Once again, Almirola was fifth last year, but Larson went from leading 782 laps and having about five races slip through his fingers and ending up ninth in the championship to leading 529 laps, having really only one race slip through his fingers and being sixth in the championship.

Atlanta is the only race Larson could be looking at as one that got away. He led 142 laps but threw the race away with a speeding penalty.

He started on pole position at Sonoma but was not a factor. He was runner-up at Darlington but only led 44 laps and it seemed like either Kyle Busch or Erik Jones would win this race.

It seemed like Larson got more of a handled on the car later in the season and perhaps he will be better in 2020.

4. Jimmie Johnson wins multiple races
Wrong! Very wrong! Things got worse for Johnson. He missed the playoffs, a first for him having made every year since the introduction of the Chase in 2004.

This has to be rock bottom for Johnson. Sixteen drivers make the NASCAR postseason, far more than ten when it was first introduced. We saw really talented drivers miss it when it was ten drivers. Only 31 drivers ran all 26 regular season races. He could not be in the top half of drivers. Three years ago he won his seventh championship. All three of his teammates made it. Ryan Newman made it. Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer made it.

Johnson has fallen from the echelon of top drivers that include Kyle Busch, Harvick, Keselowski, Logano and Truex and is just another face.

Texas is the only race Johnson came close to winning. He was third in the July Daytona race thanks to the rain. The team made a crew chief change midseason and it didn't pay off.

It has to get better. Johnson cannot have lost it all. It was not long ago would easily win five races a season and be in the top ten for 70% of the races. I know he is getting older but he is only 44 years old. He could not have lost it all.

5. Martin Truex, Jr. has at least four victories
Correct! Truex, Jr. lead the Cup Series with seven victories!

Truex went from a championship-contender with an underdog team to Joe Gibbs Racing, the best team in NASCAR. Four victories was setting the bar low because the competition would be stiff. Truex had no problem fitting in.

It was not a given Joe Gibbs Racing would see Truex come in and do this. Last year, Denny Hamlin didn't win a race and Erik Jones only won one race. Truex could have come in and done well but only had two victories.

This season confirmed Truex was not lucky with Furniture Row Racing. He went elsewhere and proved his worth.

6. At least three races that were below 50% good in Jeff Gluck's good race poll in 2018 increase in the good category by at least 25%
Correct!

Kentucky went from 23% to 81%, a 58% increase.

The Coca-Cola 600 went from 38% to 86%, a 48% increase.

The October Talladega race went from 42% to 88%, a 46% increase.

The May Talladega race went from 49% to 90%, a 41% increase.

However, while these four races saw some pretty substantial increases, 24 of 38 races polled had a lower percentage of yes votes than in 2018. Make of that what you will.

7. Neither points-paying Daytona Cup race has a last lap pass for the victory
Wrong! I hate that this one is wrong because it is a technicality.

Kurt Busch made a pit stop from the lead, Justin Haley inherited the lead, the rains came, the race was red-flagged, it was never restarted, Haley led one lap, the final lap, therefore was a last lap pass for the victory.

It was not the last lap pass anyone was expecting but it still counts.

8. At least five championship-eligible drivers in NASCAR's second division have multiple victories
Wrong! The only Grand National Series championship-eligible drivers to have multiple victories were Tyler Reddick, Cole Custer, Christopher Bell and Austin Cindric. There were five championship-eligible drivers with one victory.

I did not see this season coming. I thought Bell would win eight races again but I didn't think Custer would win seven times and Reddick six times. At best, I probably would have put those drivers down for three or four victories. They combined for 13 victories and I thought at most they would combine for eight victories. Those five races is a big number.

Justin Allgaier underperformed, having only one victory, the autumn Phoenix race. JR Motorsports underperformed with its only other victory being Michael Annett of all people at Daytona.

This was close to happening. Chase Briscoe won at Iowa in July and probably should have won at Kansas in October but the lapped car of Garrett Smithley got in the way and led to a collision that also took out Bell and it handed Brandon Jones of all people a victory.

John Hunter Nemechek didn't win a race and I thought he could have had at least one victory if not two. Noah Gragson was not really close to getting a victory and he only led a double-digit lap total in three races but never led more than 19 laps in a race.

This is a slight surprise.

9. Jeffrey Earnhardt gets at least one top ten finish in NASCAR's second division
Correct! Jeffrey Earnhardt had three top ten finishes, including a third at Charlotte in May.

The part-time ride with Joe Gibbs Racing was going well. Earnhardt led 29 laps at Daytona! He was competitive but this more or less confirms the superiority of the Gibbs program. Unfortunately for Earnhardt, there was fallout with one of the sponsors and his nine-race program ended after only five races.

10. Kyle Busch Motorsports more than doubles its victory total in the Truck Series from 2018
Correct!

I wrote that Kyle Busch could win five races alone in 2019 and he did win three races alone in 2019. Once Kyle Busch did that all he needed was one more victory for KBM to double its total of three victories from 2018.

Busch brought in Greg Biffle for the Texas race. At that point, Busch had won five of the first eight races and Biffle immediately got the team's sixth victory.

The bad news for KBM is its full-time drivers did not get a victory until Todd Gilliland won at Martinsville at October but neither he nor teammate Harrison Burton made the Truck playoffs.

When the team wins six of the first nine races and none of its drivers make the playoffs that can only be described as disappointing.

11. Let's make it seven different winners in seven Eldora races
Correct!

Add Stewart Friesen to the list of Eldora winners. It was Friesen's first career victory.

The good news is any of the top six finishers this year at Eldora would have covered this prediction. Sheldon Creed was the runner-up finisher. Grant Enfinger was third. Mike Marlar made a tremendous debut and the World of Outlaws Late Model championship finished fourth after starting 23rd. Gilliland and part-time KBM driver Christain Eckes rounded out the top six.

12. There is at least one announcement of a track reconfiguration/switch to a roval before Labor Day
Wrong!

We did not hear anything on track reconfigurations or layout changes before Labor Day.

There were plenty of schedule shake-ups though. Phoenix is going to be the finale. Daytona moves its 400-mile race from July 4th weekend to end the regular season in late August. There are going to be consecutive off weeks for the Olympics. The Brickyard 400 is going to be the Independence Day weekend race. Martinsville is moving to May and going to be a Saturday night race.

None of those fulfill the prediction and this concludes another bad set of predictions, six for 12. Not terrible but could be much better.