NASCAR enters the 2020s with Kyle Busch coming off his second Cup championship, a new sponsorship model and the Grand National Series moving to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
Oh boy, before we get into that let's look at where we have coming. When the 2010s started, Jimmie Johnson had done the unprecedented and won four consecutive Cup championships. Johnson immediately raised the bar and made it five consecutive titles. Martin Truex, Jr. had not won a race in the previous two seasons entering the decade and he was switching over from Chevrolet and Earnhardt Ganassi Racing to Toyota and Michael Waltrip Racing. Joey Logano was at Joe Gibbs Racing. Kasey Kahne was at Richard Petty Motorsports. Brad Keselowski had just joined Team Penske. Red Bull Racing existed.
Elsewhere in NASCAR, 2010 would see the introduction of Road America to the Grand National Series schedule. Montreal was on that schedule. Indianapolis Raceway Park had a Grand National Series and a Truck race. Justin Allgaier was a Team Penske development driver. Ron Hornaday had just won his fourth Truck title. Matt Crafton had one Truck Series victory. There was no dirt race and Narain Karthikeyan was the Truck Series' most popular driver?
NASCAR looks different entering the 2020s. In 2010, a race victory would get you as much as 195 points. Leading laps could get you bonus points. Now we have stages, the Chase has evolved into the Playoffs, has spread to the lower two national series and a victory, just one victory, in the regular season gets you a playoff spot pretty much regardless of how you do in the rest of the races.
NASCAR is pretty unpredictable or at least it is predictable it will do something insane. How can you ever make ten predictions over the course of a decade knowing that? We are going to take a crack at it.
1. There will be at least one tweak to the playoff format
This is almost a slam-dunk. NASCAR fools around with how it determines its champions more than a pubescent boy with his junk. NASCAR is constantly tinkering, chasing the ultimate high and never ending up satisfied.
Something is going to change. Either more drivers are going to be allowed in or fewer drivers are going to be allowed in. Or playoff points are going to be abolished or playoff points are going to be increased. Or there will be more rounds or there will be fewer rounds.
I don't know what is going to happen but something is going to happen.
Here are two wonky tweaks I have come up with:
A. If a driver sweeps a round in the playoffs that driver gets a bye. For example: If a driver sweeps round of 16 races that driver gets a bye through the round of 12 and is guaranteed a spot in the round of eight. If a driver sweeps the round of 12 that driver clinches a spot in the Championship 4. If a driver sweeps the round of 8 that driver is the champion.
Think about how much more meaningful winning would be if a driver knew winning three consecutive races would be a magic ticket to more. It would also bring back the possibility of the championship being locked up early. Instead of the winner at the first race in the round of 8 cruising for two weeks that driver could seal the deal a weekend early. That penultimate race of the season would see seven drivers trying to win and clinch a spot but possibly seven drivers trying to prevent one driver from making the finale a dead-rubber. That would be fun to watch.
B. The second tweak involves qualifying for the playoffs and I could see something where the final race of the regular season, race 26, being more of a play-in game. After race 25, all race winners and the however many drivers needed to fill the top 12 are locked into the playoffs. At race 26, every driver 13th to 30th after race 25 will be competing for the final four playoff spots. The top four finishers of those 18 drivers make the playoffs.
It sounds crazy but think about this entire playoff garbage to begin with: You could be 28th in the championship, fall ass backward into a victory in a rain-shortened race and all of a sudden have a shot to win the championship and finish no worse than 16th in the championship. If NASCAR is already doing that making the 26th race some sort of free-for-all where anyone 13th to 30th could make it and not even have to win the race but get in with an eighth place finish, that driver's first top ten finish of the season in all likelihood, is very possible of happening.
2. There will be a doubleheader weekend at a track other than Pocono
NASCAR is trying the doubleheader at Pocono this year and I think it is something we are going to see more of double the road to give teams additional weeks off. It makes more sense than mid-week races.
Let's consider the NASCAR Cup schedule for a moment:
There are 13 tracks that host two Cup races. Of those 13 tracks, only four of those tracks do not have playoff race. Those tracks are Daytona, Michigan, Dover and Pocono.
The other nine all host playoff races: Bristol, Richmond, Las Vegas, Talladega, Charlotte, Kansas, Texas, Martinsville and Phoenix.
If a track is going to host a doubleheader it has to have two races and it is not going to take place in the playoffs.
Pocono already has a doubleheader and that leaves Daytona, Michigan and Dover.
Daytona is never going to host a doubleheader. It is going to host the season opener and the regular season finale until enough people are alienated and the race is moved back to Independence Day weekend like NASCAR did with the Southern 500 and Labor Day weekend.
That leaves Michigan and Dover and it actually makes sense for those two tracks to host doubleheaders.
Neither track has two overflowing weekends in terms of attendance. It could be argued Michigan and Dover are the two tracks where seat removal has been the most notable over the last ten years.
Dover could become a doubleheader in the spring, let's say May, you already have Pocono at the end of June and Michigan could become a doubleheader in August. That would give the teams two additional off weekends.
NASCAR could either leave those off weekends in June and August where the vacated Michigan and Dover weekends would be or NASCAR could leave one in the season and move the other to the offseason and moving the season finale into October or NASCAR could move both off weekends to the offseason and the NASCAR season could be over say on October 22, 2023.
Whether or not NASCAR goes to the lengths of having three doubleheaders in a season is up for question but I do not believe 2020 is the only time we will see a doubleheader and I do not believe Pocono will be the only track that tries it.
3. At least once will the Cup champion also be the most popular driver
This is hedging that Chase Elliott will do what Dale Earnhardt, Jr. couldn't do and win a Cup championship.
Elliott should probably win one championship in the 2020s. Hendrick Motorsports cannot stay down forever and Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske are not going to split all the titles (although they could).
If there Chevrolet had to choose one driver to bring Chevrolet back to the top it would be Elliott.
This is also taking into consideration that the 2020s could be the decade NASCAR fans start to think rationally and decide that rooting for a winning driver is better than rooting for a bloodline. This could be the decade where Kyle Busch wins two or three more championships, wins eight to ten races in the season in the process and does it all while continuing to be the largest personality in the series.
At some point there has to be an awakening and people have go to start pulling for winners in NASCAR. It might not be Kyle Busch. It could be Kevin Harvick or Martin Truex, Jr. or Christopher Bell, I don't know, but we are coming off two decades ago where Jimmie Johnson won four consecutive championships to close the decade and a decade where Busch, Harvick and Johnson were the top three in victories and none of those drivers were ever the most popular. Meanwhile, the most popular faces in every other sport was picking up hardware left and right. You see the problem with that and why others could stray away from getting interested?
4. NASCAR national series will visit at least four "new" tracks (tracks that did not host a race in the 2010s)
This is mostly because NASCAR is going to force it but also because in the 2010s NASCAR national series only visited three tracks that had never before hosted a national touring series race and only visited four tracks that had not hosted a NASCAR race in the 2000s.
The three new tracks were Mid-Ohio, Eldora and Mosport and the fourth track was Road America, which had not hosted a NASCAR national series race since in 1956.
That is disappointingly low but also kind of makes sense since the track-building boom ended with Iowa in 2007 and there were plenty of new inclusions to the schedule from 1993 to 2009.
NASCAR is going to try and make the Nashville Fairgrounds happen. That is one. The Fairgrounds hasn't hosted any national series race since 2000.
There is always the chance of additional road courses. You have Road Atlanta, Circuit of the Americas, Virginia International Raceway and now people are giddy over NASCAR potentially hosting a street course race.
I could see NASCAR going to one or two more dirt tracks with the Truck Series and maybe adding a dirt race to the Grand National Series calendar. The easy choices are the Truck Series moving races from the 1.5-mile ovals at Charlotte and Las Vegas across the streets or parking lots to the dirt tracks on those properties. I could see Knoxville being a big grab. I am not sure when it would fit with Iowa Speedway hosting a Grand National/Truck weekend, a standalone Grand National Series race and the Knoxville Nationals all between the second weekend of June and the second weekend of August but crazier things have happened.
There really isn't any new ovals on the horizon. Where is a new oval being built? That Fort Erie Speedway that was announced almost 15 years ago that Jeff Gordon was involved in? If that hasn't opened now it likely never will.
However, we have ten years. Who is to say come 2024 someone in a place like Little Rock, Arkansas or Tulsa, Oklahoma or Duluth, Minnesota decides to build a 3/4-mile oval meant to attract NASCAR and in 2027 there is a Cup race at that new facility? That is possible.
NASCAR is going to branch out a bit more this decade. It kind of has already pledged to do so.
5. Kyle Busch gets into the top five of all-time Cup victories
We start this decade with Busch sitting on 56 victories, ninth all-time and he now faces the gulf that is 20 victories between him and Dale Earnhardt in eighth.
The only active driver ahead of him is Jimmie Johnson, tied for sixth all-time on 83 victories with Cale Yarborough. The next closest active driver is Kevin Harvick on 49 victories but Harvick is ten years older. The next active driver after Harvick is Denny Hamlin on 37 victories with Kurt Busch on 31 victories and Brad Keselowski on 30 victories.
I am not sure there is an active driver that can out-pace Busch in victories in the 2020s to prevent him from reaching 84 victories, the number that needed to end up tied for fourth with Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip or 85 victories, the number that would give him sole possession of fourth.
This will be a long decade and I am not sure Busch will run all of it. He would be 44 years old at the end of the 2029 season. I don't think Busch is going to entirely step away from racing at 38 years old or 39 years old but I could see him falling out of love with running the Cup Series at that time, decide to run big events such as Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500 and such and fill the rest of his schedule with Truck races and late model races.
Busch needs to win 29 races to get to sole possession of fourth. Since joining Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008, Busch has had at least four victories in a season nine times, including the last five seasons. He does have two seasons with only one victory in that stretch. He did win 40 races in the 2010s. In theory, he just needs to be 75% of what he was for the last ten years to get there.
If Busch does 40 victories again in the 2020s he is going to be third all-time on 96 victories and not only will he be sniffing the century-mark but he is going to be ready to pounce on the Silver Fox, David Pearson's 105 victories in second all-time. That is asking a lot. At the start of the 2010s if you asked me if I thought Jeff Gordon would reach 100 victories I might have said yes and Gordon ended up falling seven victories shy of that and retired at the age of 44, exactly where Busch will be at the end of the 2020s.
Busch ended the decade with 29 victories in the last five seasons. With an average of 5.4 victories a season I think we could be looking at Busch slide into the top five sometime during 2025.
6. Each manufacture has at least two drivers win a Cup championship
The 2010s saw seven different drivers win a championship, the most since the 1980s, but this didn't happen.
Chevrolet led the way. It started the decade with Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart each getting a title. Johnson added two more in 2013 and 2016 and Kevin Harvick won the title driving a Chevrolet in 2014.
Toyota had Kyle Busch win championships in 2015 and 2019 and Martin Truex, Jr. took a popular championship in 2017.
Ford only had one champion, Joey Logano in 2018 and before you say, "Brad Keselowski won the title with Team Penske in 2012," yes he did but he was driving a Dodge.
This is going to change because I believe the NASCAR field is too deep for one driver to win five consecutive championships and because I do not foresee any changes in regulations that will bring new manufactures into the championship. I think we are living with Chevrolet, Toyota and Ford until one of those three decides to drop out.
In the Toyota camp, we have Busch and Truex; both could win a championship again. Denny Hamlin was knocking on the door last season. Erik Jones is still young and promising and Christopher Bell is entering the fray.
Ford has Team Penske and two champions in Logano and Keselowski. Both could do it again. Ford has Stewart-Haas Racing. Harvick could win a championship a second time but this time for the blue oval. Maybe Cole Custer or Ryan Blaney could rise to glory or maybe Chris Buescher could bring Roush Fenway Racing back to prominence.
Chevrolet once held all the great cards but has since fallen on hard times. It still has Hendrick Motorsports. Maybe Johnson can close out his career with an eighth title in 2020 but that seems unlikely. Either way the team still has Elliott and William Byron, both young drivers. Kyle Larson is still in the Chevrolet camp, for now, but he could piece together a championship season.
Prior to Busch's title in 2019 there had been five consecutive seasons with a different champion and Chevrolet, Toyota and Ford each won a championship in 2016, 2017 and 2018. I think the playing field is going to be rather level for a while.
7. No more than two Cup rookie of the year winners from the 2010s win a Cup championship
There were not many outstanding rookie of the year winners last decade.
Kevin Conway has not raced in the Cup Series since 2011.
Andy Lally has not raced in the Cup Series since his rookie of the year season in 2011.
Stephen Leicht won rookie of the year in 2012, made one Cup start in 2017 and that is it for him in the top division.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. is not going to win a championship. Moving to JTG Daugherty Racing is a move in the wrong direction for a career.
Kyle Larson is a possibility.
Brett Moffitt has made a career for himself in the Truck Series and already has a championship down there. Maybe he can rally back to the Cup Series but that could be a stretch. Even if he does make it is questionable whether it would be in quality equipment.
Chase Elliott is a possibility.
Erik Jones is a possibility.
William Byron is a possibility.
Daniel Hemric... it is not going to be Daniel Hemric.
We have four possibilities but people already think the ship has sailed with Larson and Jones is already on the hot seat at Joe Gibbs Racing now that Christopher Bell is in the Cup Series.
Only three drivers that won rookie of the year in the 2000s won a title in the 2010s (Harvick, Busch and Logano). Matt Kenseth was rookie of the year in 2000 and won the title in 2003, the last time a driver won rookie of the year and a championship in the same decade.
Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart were the only drivers to win rookie of the year in the 1990s and win a Cup championship.
Rusty Wallace and Alan Kulwicki were the only drivers to win rookie of the year in the 1980s and win a Cup championship.
Dale Earnhardt was the only rookie of the year from the 1970s to win a championship.
David Pearson was the only rookie of the year from the 1960s to win a championship.
Rookie of the year is an unreliable predictor of future success. Add to it that Kyle Busch is likely going to be around for most of this decade, as will Logano, Keselowski and Harvick will be around for at least a little bit. It is going to be tough for all these drivers to breakthrough. A few will but not all of them and likely no more than two.
8. At least one Cup race will be in the rain
I am surprised this happened yet. The Cup Series has had rain tires for a while and NASCAR has even allowed Cup cars to race in the rain for a while but it has never worked out.
That is bound to change. The only real shot of it happening is Watkins Glen. It is not going to rain in Sonoma in June anytime soon but then again, as I write this, Australia is on fire so who knows what the weather will be like at Sonoma in 2028. We also have the Charlotte roval race, another possibility of racing in the rain.
I think the 2020s will see at least one or two more road courses/rovals/street courses add to the Cup schedule, only increasing the odds of a Cup race in the rain. It is going to happen, people are going to overreact to it and we will move on. At least some of us will move on. Others will bring it up every other day until it happens again.
9. Joe Gibbs Racing will win at least three drivers' championships in the second division
Surprisingly, the only Grand National Series drivers' championship for Joe Gibbs Racing in the 2010s was Daniel Suárez in 2016.
Christopher Bell likely should have had at least one title or perhaps two but it never worked out for Bell.
While Gibbs settled for one, JR Motorsports and Roush Fenway Racing each had three titles, Richard Childress Racing took two championships and Team Penske took the only remaining title, it was 2010 with Brad Keselowski, the final year where drivers could be eligible for multiple national touring series championships.
The Grand National Series does have a problem in that teams are fleeing. Roush Fenway Racing is already out. Chip Ganassi Racing is out. Richard Childress Racing just won the title and will not have a full-time championship participant in 2020. Does Team Penske have any incentive to keep its program going after Austin Cindric makes it to the Cup Series? Will Stewart-Haas Racing continue into 2021 with Chase Briscoe?
NASCAR's second division is in a scary situation and the only two big teams that are dedicated to the series are Gibbs and JR Motorsports.
Both Gibbs and Hendrick Motorsports via JRM have an established pipelines and act like factories. They just keep pumping out drivers. Some are going to be studs and make it to the Cup Series. Others are going to be misses and fill out Front Row Motorsports.
Gibbs is not going to stop what it is doing and if teams keep withdrawing from the series it just means more chances for a Gibbs driver to win the title. Three might come easy in 2020.
10. There will not be a winless champion in any of the three national touring series
It happened twice in the 2010s, Austin Dillon with the Grand National Series championship in 2013 and Matt Crafton in the Truck Series in 2019.
It is not going to happen because either NASCAR is going to legislate that it not be possible when tweaking the playoff format or because it has only happened twice and both times were kind of flukey.
With less and less Cup driver participation allowed in the other two series we are approaching a time when all moonlighting will be prohibited. In that case, with only the championship-eligible drivers from each series competing the odds of a winless champion will decrease greatly. Winning is going to matter more. There are going to be fewer races where the top championship-eligible driver will finish third or fourth and that will be enough to extend a championship lead.
Let's consider that while there was one winless champion in NASCAR's second division over ten years the other nine seasons saw every champion win multiple times. In the Truck Series, six of the nine other champions won three races or more in a season.
The playoff format with the champion decided in the final race is always going to leave it out there for some funky result where a driver without a victory could end up in the final four, have the best race of the season while three other drivers have down days and win the championship with a second place or third place finish. Even with the format I do not think we are going to see a winless champion happen in the 2020s.
I feel like the 2020s are going to be different.
Three down, one to go. We have done sports cars. We have done Formula One. NASCAR is in the bag. The final predictions for the 2020s will be IndyCar and that will come next week.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
