NASCAR season is finally over, and I think most are relieved the season is over. There is a sense a good number of people wanted a break, and there is another identity crisis emerging after the outcome of this season. After starting in February, a break in November is much needed. There is not even three months until the teams return to competition.
Before we get back to racing, we should look back on what has just happened. Three national touring series have wrapped up their seasons and there were plenty of memorable races and moments. A dozen predictions were made ahead the action, and it is time to see if the thoughts of last winter were true.
1. The Cup Series champion will have at least five top five finishes between the months of June, July, August and September
Wrong!
It is hard to believe this one was wrong, but for the second consecutive season, the NASCAR Cup Series champion had fewer than five top five finishes over the four months that make up summer. Last year, Ryan Blaney failed to have any top five finishes over that four-month stretch. Joey Logano did better than that, but he fell short of the prerequisite for this prediction.
Logano had four top five finishes over these four months.
Fifth at Gateway
First at Nashville
Fifth at Pocono
First at Atlanta
Logano had seven top five finishes all season, the fewest for a NASCAR Cup Series champion since Bill Rexford in 1950.
2. Every Cup playoff driver finishes the season with at least four top five finishes
Wrong!
This prediction was dead the moment Harrison Burton won the August race at Daytona. It was Burton's first top five finish of the season, and let's face, Burton wasn't going to get three top five finishes in the final 11 races of the season.
Either way, Burton wasn't the only playoff driver to fail to reach four top five finishes this season. The winner of the next race at Southern 500, Chase Briscoe, only had three top five finishes. The difference is Briscoe's Darlington victory was his third top five finish of the season. All he needed was one in the final ten races. Briscoe was sixth at Watkins Glen.
For a season that had a bunch of unexpected winners, some reached four top five finishes. Austin Cindric reached four top five finishes. Daniel Suárez reached four top five finishes. Without those victories, they likely don't make the playoffs. Without their victories at Daytona and Darlington, Burton and Briscoe likely don't make the playoffs either. Who ended up on the outside?
Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain, who all ended the season with six top five finishes, and Kyle Busch, who had five top five finishes this season. Great.
3. William Byron will have fewer victories where he lead 20 laps or fewer
Correct!
Byron only won three races this season, so as long he led at least 21 laps in one of those victories we were good.
However, he started the season winning the Daytona 500 with four laps led. He was one-third of the way to matching his 2023 performance through one race of the season. However, he led 42 laps and won at Austin and then he led 88 laps and won at Martinsville. Three victories through the first eight races.
How did the final 28 races go? No victories for Byron. There you go. Prediction correct.
4. 23XI Racing will win more Cup races but have fewer drivers in the final top ten championship standings
Correct!
Last season, 23XI Racing won twice and it had two drivers in the top ten of the final championship standings.
This season 23XI Racing won three races and had one driver in the top ten of the final championship standings.
Tyler Reddick was responsible all three of 23XI's victories this season. Reddick was fourth in the championship and Bubba Wallace was 18th after he did not qualify for the playoffs.
5. Shane van Gisbergen's average finish across the three national NASCAR series will be greater than 15.5
Correct!
Year one of the full Shane van Gisbergen experiment in NASCAR went pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but for a driver who spent over 15 years competing in Supercars, this would be a transition as he moved to a primarily oval-based series after years of exclusive competing on street courses and road courses.
After winning on his Cup debut last year at Chicago, everyone expected he would win again in NASCAR on a road course. That happened. He won three times. Portland, Sonoma and Chicago. It was three victories in five races. Pretty damn good.
While he did have top five finishes in five of six road/street course races, and he lost second for a controversial track limits penalty at Austin, he did finish 12th in his first race at Daytona and he was third at Atlanta. He was sixth in his first Phoenix start and he finished 11th on his first trip to Martinsville. He was also fourth at Indianapolis, seventh in the summer Darlington race and he finished eighth in the playoffs at Kansas.
While he had ten top ten results, there were growing pains. He had eight finishes outside the top 35.
Van Gisbergen did well in his 12 Cup starts. He was second at Watkins Glen and seventh at the Charlotte roval, but he did throw away a promising run at Chicago. He did complete every lap in both Talladega races, and he finished 12th in his first Cup race at Martinsville. In addition to Chicago, he had six more finishes outside the top 25 in Cup.
Nobody should be expected van Gisbergen to be blowing the doors off the competition, but with his road course skills, it was inevitable he would lock up a playoff spot with a victory and then have some good days here and there. There will still be tough days.
With that said, over 45 starts in NASCAR's top two divisions, van Gisbergen's average finish was 18th, which was expected by this prediction, but was also pretty impressive for him. That is kind of where his natural talent should put him. The more time he spends in NASCAR, the better he will develop. I don't know if he will every be averaging a top ten finish over an entire Cup season, but van Gisbergen can certainly hold his own to the average competitor in the Cup Series.
6. Ty Gibbs will get his first career Cup victory before the All-Star Race
Wrong!
This was a prediction limited to the first 13 races, and it looked promising to start the season. Gibbs had three top ten finishes in the first four races. Two of those were top five results. He led 137 laps at Bristol before finishing ninth after everyone struggled on tires. He was third at Austin and ranked second in points. At that point, it felt inevitable Gibbs would win and it would be soon.
However, he finished outside the top ten in the next four races and in five of the next six. In the final chance for this prediction to be correct, Gibbs was second at Darlington. Brutal.
How did the rest of the season go for Gibbs?
After four top five results in the first 13 races, he had four top five finishes in the final 23 races. He ended the season with five consecutive finishes of 30th or worse.
7. Both Legacy Motor Club entries finish in the top 25 of the owners' championship
Wrong!
This one was wildly wrong, and the switch to Toyota did not help Legacy Motor Club.
The #43 Toyota was 29th in owner's points and the #42 Toyota was ranked 35th!
Woof! It was worse than last year! The #43 entry was 27th last year and the #42 entry was 32nd. The team went in the wrong direction!
Erik Jones ended up 28th in points and missed two races. John Hunter Nemechek was 34th.
As a collective, the Legacy Motor Club results weren't much worse than last year. The team had one top five finishes and six top ten finishes combined. Last year, the team had one top five finish and seven combined top ten finishes. The difference is last year Jones was responsible for all of that and Ty Dillon contributed nothing. This year Jones had one top five and two top ten finishes while Nemechek had four top ten finishes.
That is some progress, but Jones' averrable finish dropped from 20.4 to 22.9. Nemcheck did have an average finish of 25.4 compared to Dillon's 27.5. It wasn't entirely a down year, but this was not a year of upward mobility either.
It can only go up from here in 2025, right?
8. The Iowa Cup winner will have won there previously in one of NASCAR's other national series
Correct!
Ryan Blaney won the inaugural Cup race held at Iowa Speedway, leading 201 of 350 laps from second on the grid.
Blaney's first career Truck Series victory came at Iowa in September 2012. It was his third career start. He also led 252 of 260 laps on his way to victory at Iowa in August 2015 in NASCAR's second division.
9. The driver that wins the most races in NASCAR's second division wins the championship
Wrong!
Austin Hill won four races, but Hill ended up fourth in the championship. Justin Allgaier won two races and took the title. The streak extends to 15 consecutive seasons without the driver with the most victories winning the championship at NASCAR's second level.
This season was rather competitive, and that was expected. Only four drivers won at least three races this season, but eventually the number's game will turn and the driver that dominates this series will win the title.
10. This will be the season with the most race winners qualifying for the playoff in NASCAR's second division
Wrong!
This one fell short by one. We needed nine drivers to clinch a playoff spot with a race victory in the regular season. We had eight! Even worse, there were 18 race winners this season. Sixteen of those drivers won in the regular season.
If you had told me, there would be 16 winners in the first 26 races, I would have said it is a lock there would be nine winners making the playoffs. I might have even said it would have to be ten drivers. It was eight.
The stunning thing was A.J. Allmendinger didn't win a regular season race, and he didn't win until Las Vegas with four races remaining. Jesse Love won a race, Ryan Truex won twice thought not as a full-time driver, Shane van Gisbergen won three times, Connor Zilisch won on debut. All of that occurred in the regular season, and Allmendinger could not win once.
Sheldon Creed had six runner-up finishes in the regular season but no victories! That ninth different winner could have happened. It just kept falling short.
11. Drivers with a first name beginning with the letter "C" will combine to win fewer than ten Truck races
Wrong!
This one stings because drivers with a first name starting with the letter "C" needed to win fewer than ten races. Not ten or fewer, but fewer than ten. No more than nine, two fewer than their combined victory total in 2023.
How did it work out this year? They combined for ten victories.
Christian Eckes won six times and Corey Heim won four times. Entering the penultimate race, they were on nine victories. Eckes dominated that race but Taylor Gray took the lead late only for Eckes to knock him out of the way. There went the prediction as well.
As you can see, it was just one of those years of constantly end up falling one short.
12. Each Chicago race will complete at least 95% of the scheduled distances but neither will exceed 110% of the scheduled distances.
Wrong!
I don't know what NASCAR has to do to get a clean weekend in Chicago, but it felt like this year was set to be better, and it was, but for the second consecutive year it was not smooth sailing.
The Grand National Series race on Saturday went the scheduled distance, 50 laps, 107 miles.
Sunday is where it went sideways.
All week, the forecast was clear for both days. Come Sunday, there was a storm a coming. Another rain storm red flagged the race and the delay pushed it up against sunset. NASCAR made the call that the race would end once two laps were completed after 8:20 p.m. local time. When Alex Bowman took the checkered flag, only 58 of the scheduled 75 laps were completed, 77.333% of the scheduled distance.
Let's remember that in two years of the Chicago street race, NASCAR has completed 78% of the scheduled distance, shortened the scheduled distance by 25% for year two, only for it again to only complete essentially 78% of the scheduled distance.
At this rate, we are looking at a scheduled distance of 56 laps in 2025 with only about 43 laps being completed. Oh my goodness! It doesn't get much worse than that.
Except it does, because my predictions went four for 12 this year. Lousy. Plain lousy is what that is. Some were harsh, but it is lousy nonetheless. I mean, batting .333 would have made you the best hitter in Major League Baseball this season, but I am not looking to top Bobby Witt, Jr.
On to better things in 2025.
