With NASCAR on a two-week break as the Olympics take center stage, this is a good chance to step back and assess the first five months of the 2024 schedule. So far, we’ve already seen our share of historically close finishes, dominant victories and record-breaking overtimes. But we also thought now would be a good time to give out some midseason awards to honor the most impressive performances of 2024 to date.
Let’s recognize the best of 2024 so far with some extremely prestigious (and definitely not completely made-up) accolades.
Driver of the Year: Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports
Other nominees: Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick
Who else could it be — especially after his latest win this past weekend at the Brickyard? Larson ranks No. 1 in the standings, leads all drivers this season in wins (4) and average Driver Rating (102.1), is tied for first in top fives (9) and leads the field in my Adjusted Points index (Pts+) metric, with a mark 87% better than the Cup Series average:
There are arguments for other drivers: Elliott has the best average finish (10.5) of anyone this season. Reddick has finished among the top 10 in 15 of 22 races (68%) — by far the most consistent performance we’ve seen. Christopher Bell averages more laps with the fastest speed per race (18.8). Ryan Blaney can seem unstoppable when he gets on one of his recent hot streaks. And William Byron (who has more top 10s than Larson) and Denny Hamlin are both only a win shy of Larson’s lead, with three apiece. But nobody combines pace, consistency, closing ability and skill at every type of track like Larson does.
Team of the Year: Hendrick Motorsports
Other nominees: Joe Gibbs Racing, 23XI Racing
Dominant seasons are nothing new for Hendrick, the winningest organization in Cup Series history (with 310 victories and counting). But with nine wins out of the 22 races run in 2024 so far — a winning percentage of 41% — including at least one from each of their full-time drivers, this is shaping up to be one of the team’s best seasons ever:
Second among teams in the win tally is Joe Gibbs Racing, with six victories (of which three belong to Bell and three to Hamlin). Gibbs has finished No. 2 in total wins behind Hendrick in each of the past four seasons — and they’ve had the second-most wins in six of the past seven years overall, with 2019 standing out as the lone exception. (That’s when Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Hamlin all won at least five times, and Erik Jones captured a checkered flag at Darlington.) Gibbs might be due for even more wins if Truex and Ty Gibbs can get their bad luck straightened out later in the season — more on that in a bit.
It’s tough to compare teams with different numbers of drivers, but we have to give a shoutout here to 23XI Racing’s tandem of Reddick and Bubba Wallace. They’ve only combined for a single win — Reddick’s victory in April at Talladega — which is tied with RFK and Trackhouse, and compares unfavorably to Team Penske with its four checkered flags. But 23XI actually ranks second only to Hendrick in average finish (13.8) and average Adjusted Points index (150) per driver per race, with as many top fives (13) and more top 10s (23 versus 21) than Penske despite fielding one fewer driver.
Biggest Breakout: Ty Gibbs, Joe Gibbs Racing
Other nominees: Noah Gragson, Todd Gilliland
This has been a good season for young drivers producing career-best campaigns. Perhaps the least surprising of those — but still the most impressive — belongs to Gibbs, who was coming off a season spent as the youngest full-time driver in the Cup Series in 2023.
He still held his own in that situation, with 10 top 10s, an average finish of 18.4 and a solid Pts+ index of 92, but he was also outdriven badly by his veteran Joe Gibbs Racing teammates. (Gibbs had a 31-77 head-to-head record against them across all of his races, one of the worst marks of any regular driver.) The expectations were that Gibbs would continue to improve and close the gap against the rest of the team this season, and that’s exactly what happened. His Pts+ index has soared to 131, making him one of the Cup Series’ most improved drivers in that regard. Just as importantly, he now has a perfectly 0.500 record of 33-33 against his teammates, an impressive showing considering the competition is Bell, Hamlin and Truex.
Interestingly, Gragson improved his Pts+ index even more than Gibbs this year, rising from a miserable 31 last season — which ranked ahead of only B.J. McLeod among drivers with 20 or more starts — to an essentially league-average mark of 97. The difference is that Gibbs will likely make the playoffs with his performance, though it has still been nice to see Gragson re-establish himself as a rising driver to watch. And Gilliland deserves credit for his own improvement this year at age 24. Among drivers under age 30 who didn’t previously have a career Pts+ index of at least 100, Gilliland’s 25-point improvement on his previous career mark ranks third behind only Gragson and Gibbs.
Most Pleasant Surprise: Alex Bowman, Hendrick Motorsports
Other nominees: Chase Briscoe, Daniel Suárez
Fair or not, Bowman was viewed over the past few years as the “other” Hendrick driver — solid enough, but nowhere near the class of Larson, Elliott or Byron. That trajectory reached its low point for Bowman with an injury-marred 2023 season that saw him miss three races with a fractured vertebrae in his back from a sprint-car accident and finish with a barely above-average Pts+ index of 104, his worst in a Cup season since he debuted in relief of Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2016.
This year, however, Bowman has returned to the form that once made him one of the sport’s up-and-coming young drivers. Not only did he snap an 80-race losing streak at Chicago, passing Joey Hand and holding off a charging Reddick late, but he has six top fives and 12 top 10s in 22 races, producing a 150 Pts+ index that is on pace for a career high — and is much more in line with what his teammates do on a weekly basis.
Others who currently fall under this category include Briscoe, who has rebounded from a rough 2023 to compile six top 10s, an average finish of 17.5 and a near-career best 99 Pts+ index, even as Stewart-Haas has declined from the team’s state when Briscoe joined it in 2021. And while Suárez has been only moderately more consistent than he was in 2023, he is returning to the playoffs for the second time in his career by virtue of winning in February at Atlanta.
Unluckiest Driver: Ty Gibbs, Joe Gibbs Racing
Other nominees: Martin Truex Jr., Tyler Reddick
For all of his improvements at age 21 in his third Cup season, Gibbs still has yet to win a race at the sport’s highest level. (He has started from the pole twice, including at Pocono a few weeks ago, but his best career finish is as a runner-up in May at Darlington.) Based on how he’s driven this season, however, Gibbs should have taken at least one checkered flag so far.
We can measure this by creating a statistical model that predicts how often a driver with a given Driver Rating in any given race wins it. If we do that (based on every race since 2005), here are the “unluckiest” drivers of 2024 — those with the largest gaps between the wins we’d expect them to have, and how much they actually won:
Truex is another name that probably should be locked into the playoffs by now but instead has to sweat things out via the points, as things currently stand. And Reddick is an interesting one: He has won a race, but he also owns two of this year’s five cases where a driver would be expected to win more than 50% of the time off of his Driver Rating, but failed to win (Texas and Indy).
Comeback Driver of the Year: Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports
Other nominees: Alex Bowman, Noah Gragson
This is another choice that seems obvious. The 2023 season was, by many measures, the worst of Elliott’s career: Not only did he miss seven races — six due to injury and one for suspension — but he was also less effective when he did get back behind the wheel, posting his worst average finish (13.1) since 2019 and his lowest Pts+ index ever in a full season (149). He suffered his first winless campaign since 2017 — part of what would eventually become a 42-race drought — and missed the playoffs for the first time as a full-time Cup driver.
But this season, Elliott has returned to the level of performance we’ve come to expect from him over the course of his career. He took first place at Texas to finally end his winless streak, he has 11 top 10s in 22 races, he’s gotten back to his previous career norm for Pts+ (he has a 165 mark in 2024 so far), and he owns the aforementioned Cup Series lead in best average finish (10.5). He’ll also be back in the playoffs as a driver that nobody really is looking forward to tangling with in races that count.
No, Elliott doesn’t have the same dramatic year-over-year improvement as other drivers like Bowman and Gragson. But in terms of pure “returns to form,” it’s hard to argue against the sport’s most popular driver here.
Best Silly Season Pickup: Noah Gragson, Stewart-Haas Racing
Other nominees: Josh Berry, Justin Haley
Unlike in previous Silly Seasons, where we had stars on the magnitude of Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch or Brad Keselowski changing teams, there weren’t many big names on the move heading into 2024. (The most anticipated might have been Shane van Gisbergen, who wasn’t even going to run the Cup Series full time this year.)
Still, a few drivers have acquitted themselves well on their new teams. We’ve already talked at length about Gragson’s season, but the move from Legacy Motor Club to SHR seems to have been exactly the change in scenery he needed to rediscover the potential he’d shown as Xfinity Series runner-up in 2022. Still just 26 years old, we’ll see if Gragson can land here again next year as he’ll move to Front Row Motorsports for 2025.
“Doing More With Less” Award: Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports
Other nominees: Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch
Hocevar has already gained a bit of an, um, reputation this season for his aggressive driving — something that his peers have not taken kindly to. But he is also quietly having the best head-to-head season against teammates of any regular driver this year. Driving for Spire Motorsports, Hocevar has a 33-11 record against his teammates, good for a Cup Series-high winning percentage of 75%:
Hocevar has a winning record (154-147) against the other Chevys this season as well. If we’re looking for drivers who are doing their best to rise above, Hocevar absolutely belongs on that list.
As do Blaney and Busch. For the former, it might seem odd to think of a Penske driver in that group, given how the team won each of the past two Cup Series titles. But aside from the No. 12 car, Penske has been surprisingly average this season, with non-Blaney drivers Joey Logano and Austin Cindric combining for a Pts+ index of 99.6 (remember, average is 100) despite Logano driving much better recently. On top of his 30-14 head-to-head record in the chart above, Blaney has also beaten his teammates by a stunning 59 points of Adjusted Pts+ index, the largest margin of any regular driver with below-average rated teammates in 2024.
And we should also highlight the work Busch continues to do for RCR, despite extremely challenging circumstances. In what has otherwise been the worst stretch in the worst season of his illustrious Cup Series career, Busch has still found the ability to rack up an 18-9 head-to-record against mostly Austin Dillon (but also Austin Hill, Ty Dillon and Will Brown) — one of the best marks on our list above — and he’s also beating his teammates by a whopping 42 points of Adjusted Pts+ index.