We are entering the final days of 2020 and let's face it, most of us have been looking forward to 2021 since about April. Now, we are actually going to take a good, hard look at the New Year and what we should keep an eye on across multiple forms of motorsports. Like every previous year, we are starting our prediction series with NASCAR.
1. Kyle Busch does not have winless drought of 33 races at any point
I got last year's prediction very wrong, thinking Busch would not have a winless drought of 13 races at any point over 2020. In an order of overcorrection, we will go for something that seems otherwise unlikely to happen again.
Busch did not win until the 34th race in 2020 at Texas. There was no practice once the pandemic hit and that lack of track time is believed to have hurt Busch more than any other driver. A year after his championship, Busch was eliminated in the round of 12, the earliest elimination for a defending champion since the adoption of this championship format in 2014.
Changes are afoot at Joe Gibbs Racing with Ben Beshore taking over as Busch's crew chief replacing Adam Stevens after Stevens spent six years on Busch's pit box where the duo won two championship. In combination with a new crew chief, Busch will have to learn from the limited track time in 2020 and turn it into better results, especially with a handful of new tracks on the 2021 schedule.
In all likelihood, Busch will do better. Last year was an aberration. He enters 2021 on a two-race winless drought. As long as he wins one race between the fourth race at Las Vegas and the 31st race, the Talladega playoff race, this prediction will be fine. Prior to 2020, the latest his first victory of the season came was the 25th race of the season in his rookie year in 2005.
Busch has won his first race of the season in one of the first five races in seven seasons. If you include the 2015 season, he has won in one of his first five starts in eight of 16 seasons. His first victory has come in one of his first ten starts of the season 12 times. In the four seasons where he did not win one of his first ten starts, two of those were his first two full seasons. The other two were 2017, where he did not win until the 21st race, and last year.
History tells us it will not be long before Busch gets his first victory of 2021 even if last year begs to differ.
2. The Bristol dirt race will be the slowest average speed of the season by at least 12 mph
For the first time since 1970, the Cup series will have a dirt race, as Bristol Motor Speedway will be covered in dirt for the seventh race of the 2021 season.
While this is the first Cup race on dirt in 51 years, the Truck series has been racing on dirt since 2013, with an annual summer trip to Eldora. Those were not the quickest races on record.
The fastest Eldora Truck race was the first one when Austin Dillon won at 67.401 mph. The next quickest was the following year at 50.195 mph. The next five races were all below 47 mph, with four of them slower than 45 mph. The slowest was the last race in 2019 at 41.247 mph. The average speed of the seven races was 47.729 mph.
In 2020, the slowest Cup race was the Martinsville playoff race at 71.581 mph. The Martinsville playoff race was also the slowest Cup race in 2019 at 75.448 mph. In 2019, the Eldora Truck race was 16.404 mph slower than the next slowest Truck race that season. That difference was 18.497 mph in 2018 and 22.307 mph in 2017.
Since Bristol was resurface ahead of the 2007 summer race, only one Cup race averaged a speed below 75 mph. That was the 2015 spring race. Before that, the last Bristol Cup race run at slower than 75 mph was in April 1991. In the 27 Bristol races since August 2007, only four races were below 80 mph. Thirteen of 27 races averaged over 90 mph and five of those races were over 95 mph.
The Cup cars might be a little quicker than Trucks, but a Bristol dirt race is not going to be close to the pace of Bristol as a paved track. Not to mention, the Cup field is not the most experienced dirt contingent. Kyle Larson, Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman, Ryan Newman and Christopher Bell all come from dirt backgrounds, but the entire field are not dirt experts. Some of these guys have only run on dirt at Eldora in that Truck race.
The Cup guys are good, and they pulled off a spur of the moment Daytona road course race without any colossal screw ups, but a Bristol dirt race could be a mess in more ways than one.
3. There will be more winners from the first starting position in 2021 than in 2020
In 2020, four races were technically won from the first starting position, all of those winners came after the pandemic when the grid was set via a draw for position, inversion of the first race of a doubleheader or the qualifying formula.
Four might seem low, but it's actually on par with recent seasons. The previous eight seasons had at least four winners start first on the grid. Since 2000, the average number of winners from the pole position in a season is 4.714. In NASCAR's modern era, the average is 5.204.
The qualifying formula will still be used in majority of the races and it is an imperfect way to set a grid and an imperfect barometer to measure for how a race will turn out. The results of Talladega set the grid for the Charlotte roval race. Austin Dillon started sixth for that Charlotte race. Prior to the 2020 season, Dillon had only one top ten start on a road course.
The qualifying formula mixes up the grid, but I think we will see the top teams turn a strong day at Atlanta into a strong day at Loudon. We also have some cases where similar tracks follow each other. Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond are three consecutive races early in the season. Darlington and Dover are in consecutive weeks in May. The Indianapolis road course follows Watkins Glen. There will be plenty of situations where a team could get on a run and will be at similar racetracks in consecutive weeks.
Add to it the likelihood NASCAR will keep starting the playoff drivers at the front of the field for the playoff races and that is making it easier for the top drivers. Two of the four times the first starting position produced a winner were in the playoffs. One of those was Chase Elliott's victory in the Phoenix finale where he had to start at the rear, but if you give the best teams an advantage of clean air at the start, they will likely make the most of it and pull out the result.
4. Chase Elliott does not win more than two road course races
Elliott has become the latest hot hand on road courses in the Cup series and he will enter 2021 with four consecutive road course victories. This season will feature seven road course races after the late amendment with the Daytona road course added in place of Fontana.
With a winning percentage of 41.667% on road courses, Elliott is set for 2.5 road course victories in 2021. Obviously, he cannot win 2.5 races, but I doubt he will win close to half the road course races and it is more likely he will win a third of the races, if not a sixth or none at all.
It would be crazy to think Elliott would not win one of seven road course races based on his track record. He has won the last two Charlotte roval races and the last two Watkins Glen races. He won on the Daytona road course last year.
However, Sonoma has been tougher for him. Sonoma has a rougher surface, as does Austin, which will be making its debut on the Cup schedule next year. Elliott does have two starts at Road America in the Grand National Series and he was fourth in both those races, one from 12th on the grid and the other time from second where he led 23 of 45 laps. The Indianapolis road course is the one unknown.
I don't think Elliott is going to clean house on the road courses. He will likely do well, but with three new road courses on the Cup schedule, two of which are completely new to Elliott, I think there will be a handful of different winners on road courses.
5. Chase Briscoe wins at least one road course race
One of the drivers who will make it tough on Elliott's road course dominance is Briscoe, another talented road course driver added to the Cup grid for 2021.
We have seen a handful of successful drivers move up to Cup from NASCAR's second division and not do much. Chris Buescher won a fog-shortened race in his rookie season, but he has only six top five finishes in his Cup career and he wasn't winning eight or nine races a season in the lower divisions. Daniel Suárez has not pulled out a victory in Cup. The seven Grand National Series champions from 2011 to 2019 have combined for 18 victories, 11 of those belong to Elliott.
In the last ten seasons, four seasons have seen a rookie win a race, but all of those are arguably fluke occurrences. One of those is Trevor Bayne's victory in the 2011 Daytona 500. Another is Buescher's fog-aided victory at Pocono and another was Justin Haley's rain-shortened victory at Daytona in July 2019. Cole Custer won a race that went the distance last year at Kentucky, but after a Helter Skelter green-white-checkered situation.
There is no reason to expect a rookie winning on pure pace, but Briscoe feels different and he is with a top team in Stewart-Haas Racing. After watching what he can do on road courses, it would not be a surprised if he pulled out a victory at any one of the seven road courses. You cannot rule out multiple road course victories either for Briscoe.
6. Bubba Wallace gets his career-best Cup championship finish
The most notable new team on the NASCAR Cup grid will be 23XI Racing, which basketball icon Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin will co-own and Wallace has been drafted in to be the team's first driver.
Jordan is high on this being a competitive team. With Toyota support, I expect this organization to have strong days, but in what will be a pandemic-affected 2021 season with limited track time, most races without practice and a driver in Wallace paired with a new crew chief in Mike Wheeler, I don't think 23XI will come out flying high in 2021.
This is a new organization from top to bottom. This isn't buying out Germain Racing or Leavine Family Racing and putting a new sign out front but having a tried and tested full-time set of employees. This will be a tough season, one with a lot of growing pains.
I do expect the team to be solidly in the middle of the field and maybe pushing the top 16 in points.
Wallace was 22nd in the championship last year, a career-best after two years in 28th. He had one top five finish, but he had five top ten finishes after entering 2020 with only four top ten finishes in his career. He also set a career-best average starting position and career-best average finishing position, doing it all at a single-car team in Richard Petty Motorsports.
All the Chevrolet teams made a gain in 2020, RPM included, but Christopher Bell was 20th in the championship at Leavine Family Racing in the de facto Joe Gibbs Racing satellite team. I think Wallace and 23XI can match that.
One victory can lock you into a top 16 championship finish and Wallace had strong runs on the restrictor plate tracks last year. He can clinch this prediction in the first race of the season. What a storybook beginning that would be.
7. The driver with the most victories makes the Cup final four
I think Kevin Harvick failing to make the final four after winning nine of the first 35 races and having been no worse than third in the championship at any point in the first 35 races was a fluke.
Since this format was adopted in 2014, the only other times the driver with the most victories did not make the final four were Brad Keselowski in 2014 and Joey Logano in 2015, but both those season preceded playoff points and both those drivers only had six victories, while the champions ended up with five victories.
Unless we have a situation where no one has more than four victories, I don't think the driver with the most victories misses out on qualifying for the Phoenix finale and if it does happen, it is mostly likely two or three drivers have a share of the most victories entering the finale and one of them doesn't makes it.
Harvick caught the worst breaks at the worst possible time at the end of 2020. He hit a wet spot at Texas and then spent over 100 laps fighting to get back on the lead lap at Martinsville. In both instances he lost chances at stage points, which would have put him over the line to make the final four. Add to it the Kansas race that Harvick dominated but lost one race off pit road and Logano was able to hold him off solely because of clean air and you are looking at an unfortunate trio of events that kept Harvick out of the running in Phoenix.
Ever since the introduction of playoff points we have seen at least one driver dominate, from Martin Truex, Jr. in 2017, Truex, Harvick and Kyle Busch being a three-headed monster in 2018, those three continuing there stout form in 2019 with Denny Hamlin also winning a half-dozen races and then the Harvick/Hamlin back-and-forth for all of 2020.
I think we are getting used to two or three drivers rule the roost and we expect that to continue in 2021. I know Kyle Busch had a down season, but is anyone expecting Harvick to fall off a cliff next year? No one would be surprised if Busch found his form and won a half-dozen races. We weren't that far removed from Hamlin almost being on his way out of NASCAR and yet now he is the sentimental championship favorite and a realistic contender to boot.
I don't think we are going to see the driver with the most victories or playoff points falter in two consecutive seasons.
8. At least seven drivers will have multiple Cup victories
There were only five drivers who won multiple races in 2020. That was the fewest since five in 1998. From 1999 to 2019, the average number of drivers with multiple victories was 7.952.
The notable drivers who did not win multiple races in 2020 are Kyle Busch, Martin Truex, Jr., and Ryan Blaney, though Blaney has yet to win multiple races in a Cup season. In fact, only twice has Blaney won multiple races in a NASCAR national touring series season and on both occasions, he only won two races. Both were in the Grand National Series in 2015 and 2017.
If you add Busch and Truex to the five driver that won multiples times in 2020 then that fulfills the prediction. Who else could do it? Blaney has to have a breakout season soon. There are too many races where he is at the front for the entire day and then doesn't pull it out. That has got to change, and I think Roger Penske knows he needs more than one victory a season out of Blaney.
William Byron had some strong points in 2020, but he will have a new crew chief in Rudy Fugle. Fugle and Byron had success together in the Truck series, but we have seen driver/crew chief combinations succeed in the lower division and not succeed in Cup.
Alex Bowman quietly made the semifinal round and probably should have had two victories in 2020. He let two races get away from him at Charlotte. I think Bowman could take a step forward in 2021.
We cannot forget Kyle Larson is at Hendrick Motorsports and though Larson missed basically all of 2020 after his suspension for using a racial slur, he is going to be the favorite to win the Bristol dirt race and I bet he will give Elliott a run for his money at the road courses. No one would be surprised if Larson returned and won four races in year one with Hendrick.
No one would be surprised if Kurt Busch won two races. We know Kurt Busch is good and you can count on him to pull out top ten finishes, but we do not see him leading huge chunks of laps on a regular basis. In fact, he has not led over 50 laps in any of his last six victories and he has led fewer than 50 laps in seven of his last eight victories and that goes back to 2014. In five of those victories he has led fewer than 30 laps and in two of those races he led a single-digit number of laps.
There is also my aforementioned road course sleeper Briscoe.
Outside of the five drivers who won multiple times last year and the eight other drivers mentioned, I don't think anyone outside of those 13 drivers are reasonable thoughts to win two races in a season.
Can weather and restrictor plate races go in someone's favor? Absolutely. We are only three years removed from Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. won at Talladega and Daytona, but that is a rare occurrence.
9. At least three drivers win a Grand National Series race and start less than 70% of the races
When I first wrote this prediction, I was feeling confident it was going to happen, but after it was announced A.J. Allmendinger will be contesting a full season I lost one of my surefire winners that would fulfill this prediction.
I am excited Allmendinger will be full-time because the Grand National Series will have eight strong championship contenders, but with Allmendinger and Daniel Hemric running full-time, there are not going to be as many strong part-time drivers in 2021.
We will still have Kyle Busch and he will get five chances to get one victory. I like my odds on that one. My next hope is one or both of Josh Berry and Sam Mayer get a victory as those two drivers will be splitting the #8 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports. Berry will run 12 of the first 15 races while Mayer will get the final 18 races. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will get one of the first 15 races and there are still two races unaccounted for in that entry. There will actually be four drivers in the #8 Chevrolet that could fit the criteria for this prediction.
The other hope is more Cup drivers run in the second division next year and I think it will be possible with the reduction of track time. I don't expect a full-blown return to 15 Cup guys moonlighting in the second division, but it will be one way to get more track time. For the likes of the Team Penske Cup drivers, I would not be surprised to see Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney each get three to six starts apiece. If they are getting that many races, then I think one or two of them will get a victory.
We will have to keep an eye on the number of Cup guys who use the Grand National Series as a form of practice.
10. No Grand National Series race winner on the track will be disqualified
We have had two seasons where disqualifications are in place if a car fails post-race inspection. In each of those seasons we have had at least one race winner disqualified in NASCAR's second tier.
In 2019, it was Denny Hamlin at Darlington. In 2020, it was Kyle Busch at Texas. How coincidental in both cases it was a Joe Gibbs Racing driver?
We haven't had a Cup winner disqualified and the only Truck winner disqualified was Ross Chastain at Iowa in 2019.
What are the odds it happens three consecutive years in NASCAR's second division? I am going to say low. The other two series did not have it happen in 2020. I think the Grand National Series will have its first clean season in three years of this new policy.
11. At least three Truck drivers that competed in 2020 and missed the playoffs will make the playoffs in 2021
I will keep this simple.
Derek Kraus, Raphaël Lessard, Johnny Sauter, Tanner Grey and Stewart Friesen were 11th through 15th in the championship and Chandler Smith was 17th after not being able to run the first few races due to age restrictions. Add in John Hunter Nemechek, who made three starts, and Ryan Truex, who made nine starts, and you have nine capable drivers who were not in the 2020 Truck playoffs that you would consider penciling in one of the ten spots for 2021.
You are not going to have all ten drivers from 2020 make it back in 2021. A 30% change is not asking a lot. Nemechek will win races, Sauter could win a race and Kraus was looking strong and it would not be a surprise if his first career victory came in 2021. I think Smith will be better and, as long as there is a dirt race, Friesen has a great chance at victory. One victory gets you into the playoffs. There will be some new faces in the title fight.
12. Both Kyle Busch Motorsports drivers make the Round of Eight in the Truck playoffs
Piggybacking off the prediction above, I think a KBM truck is the best automobile John Hunter Nemechek has gotten in his NASCAR career. We have seen some disappointing results from KBM drivers the last handful of years, but Nemechek is already a proven Truck series winner, and he was winning races with his father's team. He should be one of the early title favorites.
I think Chandler Smith could pull out a victory. Smith was impressive in 2019 when he could only run short tracks because he was not yet 18 and 2020 did not go as planned, as he was unable to make a start until July. I think the pandemic threw off his development a bit, but he did have five top five finishes in 12 starts, all of those coming in his final six starts of the season, while Raphaël Lessard had four top five finishes in 23 starts. Smith had only two fewer top five finishes than Christian Eckes who made the playoffs.
On paper, KBM should put both its entries in the playoffs and both drivers should win races. I expect that to happen. I expect Nemechek to pick him up where he left off when he left Trucks, but now in better equipment. I expect Smith to breakout similar to what we saw from the unrelated Zane Smith in 2020.
GMS Racing is going to field three or four strong Trucks with defending champion Sheldon Creed and Zane Smith leading the way. Brett Moffitt has moved to Niece Motorsports, which will also have Ryan Truex. ThorSport Racing had three drivers make the playoffs last year. Between Matt Crafton, Grant Enfinger, Ben Rhodes and Johnny Sauter, they are all playoff contenders, but we saw Sauter miss last year. Austin Hill will be a factor. Hallie Deegan will drive for DGR-Crosley.
There are only ten playoff spots and there are at least 15 serious playoff contenders. Five will not make it from the start. Last year, Eckes was the only KBM driver to make the playoffs and he was eliminated in the first round. It is a tough field, but I expect Nemechek and Chandler Smith to exceed the team's 2020 results.
One set of predictions are in the books and we will return after Christmas with the other four set of 2021 predictions. Next up will be Formula One.
