@nascarcasm: Strange yet true facts from the 2024 NASCAR season

After we pulled some of the most fascinating stats from the 2024 NASCAR season, @nascarcasm digs into the data to find a few other nuggets you may find intriguing.

Joey Logano’s three championships (2018, 2022, 2024) may seem like they happened close together. But of the six three-time champions in NASCAR history, Joey took the second longest to reach three championships -- seven years. Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip all took six years or fewer. 

The too-close-to-even-tell spring finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway was just the third closest finish of the 2024 season among NASCAR's top series.

At 38 years old, Justin Allgaier is 20 years older than the youngest driver to win an Xfinity Series championship (Chase Elliott, who was 18 in 2014) but a decade younger than the oldest driver to do so (Jack Ingram, who was 48 in 1985).

Ryan Blaney has never lost a Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway. Never.

Two-thirds of full-time Cup Series drivers with a last name that starts with "B" earned a spot in the 2024 playoffs. Two more -- Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher -- came within 0.003 seconds and 0.001 seconds of doing so.

Martin Truex Jr. joined Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Clint Bowyer, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne and Aric Almirola on the list of recent drivers who went winless in their final year of full-time competition in the Cup Series. The trick seems to be waiting until after the season to announce it -- like Carl Edwards, who won three times in 2016 and THEN deciding he was gonna peace out.

We heard all about Joey Logano’s even-year phenomenon. But has anyone claimed the odd years? Maybe, like, a little bit -- the closest we have is Kyle Larson. He earned a spot in the Championship 4 in 2021 and 2023. If he makes it to Phoenix in 2025 then yes, he is officially Odd-Year Kyle.

By winning at Circuit of The Americas a few weeks after, William Byron broke a three-year streak in which the winner of the Daytona 500 did not win another race the remainder of the season. For Michael McDowell (2021), Austin Cindric (2022) and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (2023), the Daytona 500 was their sole win that year.

Sheldon Creed set the record for most career runner-up finishes in the Xfinity Series without a win this season -- he now has 13 of them total. We selected a photo that we feel would be his reaction when we remind him of this again.

Aric Almirola is retired from full-time competition in NASCAR ... and had the best year of his racing career in all of the top three series. He won three times during his part-time campaign in the Xfinity Series for Joe Gibbs Racing. Let’s hear it for temp work.

Stewart Friesen did not earn a spot in the 2024 Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs, but he did manage one distinction this season -- he’s the only full-time driver across all of NASCAR’s top three series to not DNF in 2024.