Saturday’s Team EJP 175 (Noon ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway marks the first elimination race of the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs in the series’ first visit to the New England one-miler since 2017.
Tricon Garage’s Corey Heim and Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs have already advanced with wins in the previous two Round of 10 contests, while ThorSport Racing’s Jake Garcia is 14 points behind Spire Motorsports’ Rajah Caruth for the eighth and final playoff position. Rigg’s FRM teammate Chandler Smith is 24 points below the cutline. Two postseason drivers will be eliminated from title contention following the conclusion of Saturday’s bout.
No current playoff driver has won previously at New Hampshire, and among the field of 10, only Daniel Hemric and Grant Enfinger — third and fifth, respectively, in the playoff standings — have raced there before in the circuit. Cup Series driver Christopher Bell won the last Truck Series race at New Hampshire in 2017 en route to a series championship.
While Heim has turned in a record-setting season — leading the points standings for the last 16 weeks — New Hampshire presents a new opportunity for the field as one of six “new” tracks on the schedule this year.
Hitting on the right set-up has proven to be key — nine of the last 10 New Hampshire Truck Series races have been won by the driver who leads the most laps. The last 10 race winners have all started from the first row of the grid.
Not only will the race determine who moves on to challenge for the season title, but it could also be the scene of a historic achievement. A victory Saturday afternoon for Heim would be his ninth — tying an all-time record set by former series champion Greg Biffle in 1999. Heim is also 219 laps away from matching the all-time single-season laps-led record set nearly 30 years ago by Mike Skinner, another former champion (1996).
Practice will occur at 4:05 p.m. ET on Friday, followed by qualifying at 5:10 p.m. ET. Both segments will air on FS2.
After a chaotic Saturday night elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway, the 12 drivers who survived and advanced in the Cup Series playoffs could breathe a sigh of relief … for about a nanosecond. Now comes the Round of 12, which promises to be just as nerve-wracking — more so, in fact, as drivers claw their way ever closer to the championship.
But some may have more to worry about than others. Five drivers (Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney) enter the second round at least 19 points clear of the cutoff for the Round of 8, and a sixth (Chase Briscoe) is 10 points above the line. The rest — Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick — are all within single-digits of the cut-line, either positively or negatively.
How does that all play into their chances to make the next round of the playoffs? Once again, let’s consult our Cup Series Playoffs forecast model, which uses projected Driver Ratings to simulate the remainder of the playoffs 10,000 times, tracking who advances (and how far) on average. Here are the numbers through the Bristol night race:
As we see in the chart above, the six drivers with double-digit buffers versus the cut are also sandwiched between 83 and 91 percent odds to move on, currently taking up 5.2 total expected spots in the Round of 8. (This means there are effectively six other drivers fighting over the remaining 2.8 spots to advance!) Hamlin is your favorite, checking in a bit over 90 percent, with Byron, Bell and Blaney not far behind.
At the edge of the top favorites, there are some interesting wrinkles. Briscoe, for instance, has a higher chance to advance than Larson in the model, despite Larson owning 14 more playoff points going into the round, while Wallace and Elliott sit well below them both. A lot of that has to do with Briscoe’s ongoing hot streak — he’s been the best driver in Cup by Average Finish, Adjusted Points+ indexand average Driver Rating since the Food City 500 in mid-April at Bristol, fully 21 races ago:
Even in terms of more recent form, Briscoe has also been better over the past 10 races by all three metrics. So it makes sense he would be expected to drive the wheels off his No. 19 JGR ride — metaphorically, that is, not literally — going forward as well. The others in that quartet, however, are in varying states of form over the previous 10-race span:
Larson hasn’t been doing his best racing recently, but his odds in the model are salvaged by the 32 playoff points he’s banked away — second-most behind Denny Hamlin’s 34 — as well as the fact that we’re headed to a trio of strong tracks for him in Loudon, Kansas and the Charlotte Roval.
Wallace and Elliott, meanwhile, are locked in a duel around 50-50 odds to make the next round, along with Reddick and Logano. That foursome of drivers is, unsurprisingly, under the most pressure immediately as we head to New Hampshire this weekend, followed by Cindric and Chastain (whose advancement odds are each a shade under 40 percent).
What makes their collective battle especially fascinating are all the factors pointing in opposite directions. In terms of recent performance, it’s hard to bet against Wallace — behind the wheel in one of those mighty Toyotas — given that he ranks No. 6 in Adjusted Points+ index and No. 4 in Driver Rating over the past 10 weeks, easily better than any of the other five names he’s tangling with below 80 percent in the model’s advancement odds. If we believe in peaking at the right time (and there’s evidence it matters a lot), Bubba ought to have the Round of 8 in his sights.
However, track selection matters as well — and this is where Elliott, Reddick and Logano hold the major edge. In terms of career performance at Loudon, Kansas and the Roval, each has been well above average in both Adjusted Points+ index and Driver Rating, with Elliott standing out as particularly strong at this set of tracks:
(Note that the forecast model bases its predictions on broad track types — ovals, short tracks, superspeedways and road courses — but doesn’t know about track affinities beyond that, meaning drivers who are disproportionately good at a particular site relative to others of that type will be better than projected.)
For their parts, Bubba and Ross are both former Kansas winners, with the former claiming the trophy in 2022 and the latter doing it a year ago. But neither has been as good there overall as the trio of Elliott/Reddick/Logano — in fact, Wallace has only been around average there in his career, and that’s his best track of the round. If the trade-off between form and fit favors consistent track success, Bubba is facing a real fight to be one of the eight drivers left standing next round.
That’s why we run the races, though. In the model’s simulations, the flashpoint battles that will swing the advancement odds most throughout the round center on just a handful of drivers, in order: Logano versus Elliott and Reddick; Elliott versus Chastain, Reddick, Wallace and Cindric; Wallace versus Chastain and Reddick. If things go according to projections, those are the matchups that will define the pressure-cooker of the Round of 12.
But we also have to leave room for our sport’s favorite plot twist: Chaos. So give the favorites their due, but recognize that no one is truly secure — and plenty of those names currently sitting above 80 percent could find themselves squarely in the middle of the storm a week from now. And honestly? That’s when the real race to survive begins.
RFK Racing announced Thursday that longtime sports executive Chip Bowers will take the organization’s reins as team president.
Bowers previously served as president of business operations for Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins from 2018-19, before working as president of Elevate Sports Ventures, a global sports and entertainment agency. His role with the Marlins came after nearly six years as chief marketing officer for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, which won three league titles and was named Sports Business Journal’s “Sports Team of the Year” twice during his tenure.
“I’m honored and thrilled to be joining one of NASCAR’s premier racing teams,” Bowers said in a release provided by the team. “As both a fan of the sport and a North Carolina native, this is truly a full-circle moment for me in my career. I’m incredibly appreciative of Jack Roush, John Henry, future Hall of Fame driver and owner Brad Keselowski and our esteemed board of directors for asking me to be a trusted partner in leading the organization to new heights.”
Bowers replaces Steve Newmark, who announced in July that he would become the executive associate athletic director for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Newmark was a NASCAR team president with the Jack Roush-founded organization since 2010, a tenure that spanned the team’s transition from Roush Fenway Racing to Brad Keselowski’s ownership investment and a name change to Roush Fenway Keselowski (RFK) Racing in 2022.
RFK Racing currently fields three Cup Series entries for drivers Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece and Keselowski. The team indicated that Bowers will be tasked with “scaling the business for sustained growth,” plus building stronger bonds in the areas of corporate partnerships and innovation.
“Chip brings a fresh perspective that we’re really excited about,” said Keselowski. “He has proven he can grow organizations and think creatively in some of the most competitive sports markets, and that experience will help us find new ways to strengthen our team.”
Bowers also has experience with the NBA’s Orlando Magic and the former Seattle Supersonics, the WNBA’s Seattle Storm and MLB’s San Diego Padres.
When the Next Gen car debuted in the 2022 NASCAR season, Trackhouse Racing was one of the first Cup Series teams to seize on the nuances of the then-unfamiliar racer. Trackhouse driver Ross Chastain recalled a test on the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval before that season, when their group unlocked some next-level grip — a sudden discovery that helped the team win three races that year and achieve upstart status among the garage’s old guard.
Times have changed in the handful of years since, save for Trackhouse rookie Shane van Gisbergen’s near-automatic beast mode for road-course events this season. The current state of the organization’s oval-track program has left Trackhouse playing catch-up at multiple venues, with no easily identifiable stronghold on the schedule. “We’re not leading laps anywhere,” Chastain says. “So it kind of answers the question.”
That deficit looms large over the Justin Marks-founded team’s aspirations for this year, with Chastain left as the lone Trackhouse driver carrying championship eligibility into Sunday’s Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App). The contest is the opening event in the three-race Round of 12, the second stanza in the 10-race postseason, and Chastain ranks 11th among the remaining dozen playoff hopefuls in a tightly packed battle on the elimination brink.
The 32-year-old driver launched into the postseason field with a rousing victory in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte at the end of May. He hasn’t posted a top-five finish since, and his 72 laps in the No. 1 Chevrolet this season rank last among the 12 playoff-eligible drivers by a wide margin (23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick is the next rung up on the list with 156 laps led).
The pressure is there, not just to rekindle some of the team’s 2022 magic but also to make inroads into the competition edge currently held by each manufacturer’s most established teams — Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports, Ford’s Team Penske, plus Toyota with Joe Gibbs Racing. Nine of the 12 remaining playoff drivers come from those three organizations, and the Gibbs group swept the opening Round of 16 with three different drivers (in order: Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell) claiming victory.
“The question will always be, how do you beat the Big Three?” Chastain said, making an inferred nod toward Hendrick, Penske and Gibbs during a midweek media roundtable in NASCAR’s offices. “I think it’s just the nature of the sport and the quantity of people and the quantity of dollars. They’re cubic over there. So yeah, I feel like we can. Justin (Marks) wouldn’t do it, we wouldn’t all pour the effort and money into it if we didn’t think we could go compete. And like, we can. We did it at Charlotte. We did it at Kansas last year. We’ve done it. Daniel (Suárez) could have won Vegas in the spring, but how do we continue to do that? We do it every now and then. That’s our big question: How did we do it then, and we don’t have an answer, and then how do we do it again? We don’t have an answer, but we’re trying.”
The team isn’t standing pat waiting for that answer to arrive. In mid-July, Trackhouse hired veteran exec Todd Meredith as its president of racing operations, bringing in a key figure who years ago helped set the groundwork for what Joe Gibbs Racing would become. Earlier that same month, Trackhouse announced that the 2025 campaign would be Suárez’s last with the team, paving the way for dynamo prospect Connor Zilisch to begin his full-time Cup Series career under the team’s banner next year.
All those changes will make Chastain, who joined Trackhouse for that fateful 2022 season, the senior-most driver on next year’s team roster alongside rising sophomore van Gisbergen and incoming rookie Zilisch. Chastain admitted that his experience with how Cup teams operate is limited by his exposure — a journeyman stint with car owner Jay Robinson, plus brief stops with Jack Roush, Spire and Chip Ganassi before his current tenure with Trackhouse.
Still, many of the new faces around the Concord, North Carolina-based shop are already tapping into Chastain’s institutional knowledge — and not just focusing on the balance of this season, but for 2026 and beyond.
“They’re leaning into me, and (there) are already processes, new people that have come in this year,” Chastain said. “Some of them are only focused on offseason and next year’s stuff, not right now. We’ve got what we’ve got right now, so let’s start on next year, raising kind of our next group of leaders in the company, and raising the bar for employees is something Todd’s big on. So kind of doing it ourselves and not always looking outside of our four walls is something we’re focused on.”
The more immediate future for Chastain centers on the three tracks in the Round of 12 — New Hampshire this weekend, followed by Kansas Speedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on successive weekends. Trackhouse’s No. 1 Chevy team has distinct reasons for optimism at all three.
Two months ago, Chastain and Co. were one of three teams to participate in a two-day Goodyear tire test at the 1.058-mile New Hampshire oval, gaining valuable insights, data and track time that could come in handy Sunday. Kansas was the site of Chastain’s lone 2024 victory last fall, and the Charlotte Roval at round’s end will provide an opportunity for the team to draft off van Gisbergen’s road-racing expertise. “If I can replicate what Shane does, if I’m within like five seconds of Shane, I’ll be in second,” Chastain said with a laugh.
The building blocks are already taking shape for Trackhouse to regroup next season. This season, reaching the Round of 8 and taking the next step toward Chastain’s first Championship 4 appearance since 2022 will require finding more of that next-level pace that the “Big Three” are known for.
“That’s what this sport rewards is speed,” says Chastain, who finished 10th at New Hampshire last year. “That’s what most sports reward, like who can run the fastest, who can hit the ball the furthest, like who can kick the ball the hardest, who can drive the car the fastest? We just want to go faster than them, and that’s what makes it so good, is when we do beat them, we deserve it.”
As the 2025 Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs roll on, few in the NASCAR realm are taking any driver to knock off Corey Heim for the championship.
However, Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs is starting to emerge as a legitimate threat to the eight-time winner this season. Riggs took his third race trophy of 2025 last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway to lock himself into the Round of 8. But it took a while for things to click for the second-year driver in the No. 34 Ford.
Entering his rookie year in 2024, expectations for Riggs were through the roof, set by himself among others, jumping into a championship-contending team after recently winning a NASCAR Weekly Series title. Through the first nine races of his rookie campaign, Riggs tallied just a single top 10, that coming in the spring Bristol race with DNFs in both the season opener at Daytona and at Texas.
“I’m looking at the success that Todd (Gilliland) and Zane (Smith) had in the truck and having to go in the shop every week and look at the win banners,” Riggs told NASCAR.com last Thursday at Bristol. “You hear the broadcast people talking about ‘well, this truck should run up front and win races.’ That’s always tough and a little bit of pressure when I’m just trying to kind of get my footing and figure it out. I wouldn’t say it made me run any worse. It just definitely put some more pressure on me to get a little quicker.”
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
Riggs missed the playoffs in his rookie year, but began a turnaround in his fortune as he found his footing.
He touted how one specific track flipped the script on his Truck career and helped lead to top fives in four of the final seven regular-season races.
“It was Gateway,” Riggs said. “I kind of had this breakthrough moment during the race. We made some adjustments that were backwards from what I thought we needed. (Crew chief Dylan Cappello) didn’t tell me till after the race what he did, and I just couldn’t believe it. I just really pieced together. I was like, ‘wow, this is the feel I’m looking for.’ We ran like 15th all day and then we made those adjustments, and I ended up finishing fifth. I think that was the point of ‘OK, this is the feel I’m looking for. This is what it takes to go fast.’ I was running up front and I just kept applying that to this day. After that race, we pretty much started running top five every race and then got our wins and been a contender and threat ever since then.”
The feel took full throttle at a string of smaller ovals as Riggs scored top fives at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park (IRP) and Richmond before finding pay dirt with his first career victory at The Milwaukee Mile in the postseason opener. He followed with a second consecutive checkered flag at Bristol before closing his maiden Truck campaign with consecutive top 10s at Martinsville and Phoenix.
Trying to keep that momentum through the offseason, Riggs looked for avenues to stay sharp before his second season but a string of internal changes at FRM set the course for an adjustment period that he knew would take time.
“It was definitely tough for us because we made the big change, moving shops, added a second truck, building trucks, hiring three times the people we had,” Riggs said. “It was definitely a little bit of a shock to all of us, but we just kept doing our thing. Now I feel like we’ve gotten stronger from that. At first, I feel like it kind of hurt us a little bit just because growing pains, but now I think it’s just really showing that both trucks are running well week in and week out. When you’re two months out of the seat you haven’t driven a race car, you always question yourself the first race. Can I still do this? After the first lap on the race track, you’re like, ‘oh yeah.’ Like I never left. Just like riding a bike.”
Right out of the gate in 2025, the momentum continued. Riggs didn’t kick off the year with a victorious bang, but found himself close to the top of the standings — getting up to fifth in points after the series returned to Rockingham Speedway.
With a win evading him entering the summer, questions arose about where it would come.
Cut from short-track cloth, Martinsville, Bristol and North Wilkesboro came and went for that opportunity. So where did Riggs end up scoring his first win of the year to punch his first postseason ticket?
Pocono Raceway.
The questions immediately flew to Riggs after climbing out of his truck about how the track must’ve felt like a short track to him. But in that moment, Riggs was ready to dissolve the label.
“It kind of annoyed me,” Riggs admitted. “In the post-race, I forgot who it was, asked me, ‘So since you won today, Pocono must feel kind of like a short track the way the corners drive.’ I was like, ‘I’m putting my foot down today. I am not labeled a short-track racer anymore. I can do it all.’ I mean, I’ve proven to be fast on road courses, big tracks, short tracks, speedways. I think I’m kind of an all-around driver. I’ll always be labeled the short-track guy just because of what my roots were and how long I spent at a late-model level. But I think that I have just as much confidence, or more confidence, showing up to a mile-and-a-half than I would a short track.”
With a playoff berth secured and a dominant victory at IRP a month later, Riggs set the tone for the type of contender he wanted to be heading into the postseason.
While title-favorite and regular-season champion Heim got the jump at Darlington, Riggs hung with him and arguably had the truck to beat before slamming the wall late in the race trying to hold off the No. 11 Tricon Garage ace.
Riggs responded in grand fashion. He led 110 of 250 laps at Bristol two weeks later to join Heim with an automatic bid into the Round of 8.
Heim may have more than double the wins than Riggs, but looking at on-track performance, he believes the No. 34 team is nearly even with Heim.
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media
“I think just the stopwatch is the biggest tell for everything,” Riggs said. “We’re right there with performance and speed and feel like we have just as much mojo as they do. I feel like they can execute a little better just because they have more experience. Corey’s fourth or fifth year in the trucks now. They’re a little more consistent and put together races, but I feel like we have the raw speed. We’re really strong at Phoenix. Both times I’ve ran there, I’ve been good. I really like that race track and it all comes down to one race. Anything can happen.”
This Saturday will mark Riggs’ 50th career start in the Truck Series as the Round of 10 wraps up at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (noon ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
It took a couple of months into his Truck career to really get a feel for it. If this version of Layne Riggs got to speak to himself before Daytona to start his rookie year, he would tell him to be patient.
“Ride the course, it’s gonna come to you,” Riggs said. “Don’t question yourself and your abilities. There’s a lot of people telling you that with the struggles, like ‘you’re doing fine. You’re doing everything right.’ It’s just so hard when you look at the stat sheets and don’t really get to see the results pan out, even though you had the speed and the ability to do it. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay strong and just believe in yourself and just keep putting that hard work, and then the results will come.”
Here’s what’s happening in NASCAR with the Bristol Night Racein the rearview and Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedwayup next (2 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
1. After Round of 16 sweep, we know JGR is elite — what else?
The Round of 16 was a consistent onslaught by Joe Gibbs Racing, turning in an unrelenting display of dominance as its three playoff drivers each participated in the opening round sweep. Will it continue or will others rise?
Joe Gibbs Racing’s sweep of the Round of 16 to open the 2025 Cup Series Playoffs was nothing short of historic, capturing all three race wins and dominating the laps-led counter — but that only tells part of the story. Toyota, powered largely by JGR’s trio of playoff standouts, commanded 78.6% of the laps across the three races, underscoring its current supremacy with just seven races remaining before a champion is crowned. The respective victories by Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell at Darlington, Gateway and Bristol — with elimination never really in question for 23XI Racing Toyota compatriots Tyler Reddick or Bubba Wallace, either — highlight both JGR’s speed and depth across differently styled tracks; a necessary trait on the championship path. The team won five of six possible stages and secured nine top-10 finishes in the round (five more than any other team), showcasing a formula perfectly suited for playoff success.
Yet JGR’s dominance is part of a larger, more nuanced narrative. Only one driver that started the playoffs above the playoff cutline — rookie Shane van Gisbergen, who many had penciled in as a first-round elimination anyway — was eliminated in the Round of 16, marking one of the closest cutdowns of the modern playoff era. This signals the rising competitiveness and fine margins in today’s playoff system, emphasizing that many strong contenders remain in the hunt. Of the 12 that do, a whopping nine of them have previous Championship 4 experience, many of them being several-time visitors. Go ahead and look up and down that field of 12; each one of them has a realistic and feasible path to the Championship 4 from here, and, even despite the Toyota dominance, you don’t get the sense that anybody is going to really run away with it.
Still, it’s hard to ignore what did happen and wonder how much of it will continue as things reset a bit with the Round of 12.
Briscoe continued an emergent summer, maintaining pace as the model of consistency and finishing in the top 10 in all three Round of 16 races, a solo feat no other playoff driver matched this round. No. 19’s performance was built on accumulating critical stage points and leading substantial laps (451), demonstrating that, in this playoff format, sustained excellence and smart racing strategy can be just as important as outright victories, as he would’ve been a clear advancer even without the win.
The Round of 16 starkly revealed the current divide among manufacturers, as well. Toyota’s overwhelming performance contrasts decisively with Chevrolet’s struggles, as the manufacturer saw just two top-five finishes across three races and an average finish hovering near 22nd place. Chevy flagship Hendrick Motorsports, traditionally a powerhouse team at this time of the season in particular, recorded some of its weakest playoff results, with Kyle Larson failing to crack the top 10 in any playoff race despite the round consisting of three of his strongest tracks. Regular Season Champion William Byron has similar difficulties converting performance into results at critical moments all of a sudden, and with five straight finishes outside the top 10, he’s now on pace for his worst average finish since 2022, when he last missed the Championship 4.
Ford, while better than Chevrolet in this round, showed mixed results. Team Penske drivers exhibited flashes of speed but lacked the dominant urgency to fully threaten Toyota’s supremacy. The Blue Ovals’ inability to win more than one stage in the Round of 16 hints at a potential pace gap relative to Toyota teams.
Bubba Wallace has been a revelation, leading all playoff drivers in stage points with 35 and demonstrating a level of maturity and consistency that make him a threat in the coming rounds as he mounts his first realistic championship run. Meanwhile, Tyler Reddick starts this round in last place, but a runner-up showing at Darlington inspires confidence, and he’s only three points in the hole. He could easily find himself on the right side of the bubble come Monday.
The elimination of SVG trims some unpredictability from the field, with some already having penciled him into the Round of 8 with the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval looming in this round and given everything we’ve seen from him on road courses this year. Now that he’s out, it puts even more pressure on the remaining 12 to win one of these next two with Kansas Speedway following New Hampshire.
(And on a related note, could someone like Austin Cindric, a dark horse Round of 12 driver and one that finished fourth at the Roval last year, now play that potential role as a shock advancer to the Round of 8?)
Joey Logano, sitting just below the cutline, combines extensive playoff experience with a track record of delivering under pressure. With the round opener at his home track in New England, he could be primed to pounce early here despite a down year. Ryan Blaney’s current fifth-place slot is comfortable but fragile, with three sneakily unpredictable races inhabiting this round.
This Round of 16 reinforced that, yes, speed and dominance set a championship foundation, and JGR looks like it could potentially put all three of its playoff drivers in the Championship 4.
But the evolving playoff battle demands consistency and resilience under pressure, and 0h-by-the-way, there’s a bunch of other drivers and teams just absolutely determined to beat Toyota now, solely focused on going faster than them.
In some ways, seven races remaining feels like an eternity. And we’re perhaps only scratching the surface of where these playoffs are headed.
David Jensen | Getty Images
2. Will Chevy’s Loudon drought end Sunday … by a surprise driver?
Chevrolet’s lack of victories at New Hampshire is increasingly glaring as the skid stretches even further into its second decade. With an up-for-grabs race ahead of us this weekend, it could be snapped – but not, perhaps, by the driver that would come to mind first.
With the Round of 12 around the corner and a “Magic Mile” showdown set for New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday, one under-the-radar storyline quietly looms large and holds potentially serious playoff implications: Chevrolet can’t seem to win in New England anymore.
Halloween isn’t until next month and Loudon, New Hampshire isn’t quite a stone’s throw Salem, Massachusetts (about 78 miles), but the numbers tell a haunting tale.
Despite historically dominating the track with a manufacturer-best 19 all-time victories, none of the bowtie brand’s current teams have tasted lobster in Victory Lane since Kasey Kahne’s triumph on July 15, 2012. That drought spans 18 races and two generations of Cup Series stock car — a staggering drought for a manufacturer that once treated New Hampshire as personal property.
The malaise is most notable in Chevrolet’s premier organization. Hendrick Motorsports, typically the gold standard for bowtie excellence, already arrives at New Hampshire nursing fresh wounds from a disastrous playoff opener at Darlington where all four drivers finished outside the top 15 … and things didn’t get a whole lot better from there the rest of the round. Kyle Larson, despite being a three-time runner-up at Loudon, has never reached Victory Lane here. A meager 22 laps led across 14 starts represent his lowest total for any track with multiple appearances. William Byron has yet to crack the top 10 in seven Loudon starts, making it the sole active track where he lacks a top-10 finish. Alex Bowman’s struggles are equally pronounced, carrying a painful 24.4 average finish that speaks to the broader organizational challenges — and he just got knocked out of the playoffs, anyway. Chase Elliott has led double-digit laps in three of the last four there, but owns just three top 10s in 11 starts.
This Chevrolet weakness stands in stark contrast to Toyota’s iron grip on New Hampshire, which comes at a time when the manufacturer is already proving to be elite. Joe Gibbs Racing has transformed Loudon into its delightful summer getaway destination, sweeping the three Next Gen Loudon races and just flat-out owning the laps-led category in this era.
Yet amid this Toyota supremacy and Chevrolet despair, an intriguing wildcard emerges: Ross Chastain.
The 32-year-old Floridian’s Loudon resume quietly hints at breakthrough potential, despite a second half of 2025 in which he’s gone all but missing on the results sheet. In the last four Loudon races, he’s recorded three top-10 finishes, and was Chevy’s lone driver representative at a Goodyear tire test at the track not even two months ago. We’ve already seen what this team can do when the pressure is on, winning NASCAR’s marathon crown jewel from the tail of the field in May. Starting the Round of 12 below the cut in 11th place? They’re certainly not resting easily right now.
He hasn’t found the top 10 on an oval in quite some time — Michigan, to be exact — but six of his last seven 2025 finishes have been top-20 results, with no fewer than 17 points in any of them (hence why he’s still here).
While Hendrick Motorsports wrestles with its well-known fundamental setup issues on flat tracks, Trackhouse could once again demonstrate the ability to punch above its weight class and clinch a Round of 8 spot before any of its drivers.
The broader context amplifies Chastain’s opportunity. Chevrolet’s playoff struggles run deeper than individual driver performances as Toyota wipes the floor, as previously established. Hendrick’s recent form suggests its struggles may persist as we head to the type of flat, 1-mile oval that has consistently been its one weakness in the Next Gen era.
Another winless weekend at Loudon would extend the drought to 19 races and add another chapter to one of modern NASCAR’s most perplexing manufacturer struggles.
The irony cuts deep; a track where Chevrolet once reigned supreme has become a house of horrors, with each passing race adding weight to the “Loudon curse” narrative that has haunted the manufacturer at the “Magic Mile” since the year “Magic Mike” was released in theaters.
After the recent dominance in the Round of 16, Kyle Petty tells you why you shouldn’t pin the Cup championship on Joe Gibbs Racing just yet.
4. Champions make the magic happen at New Hampshire
Twelve of the last 16 race winners at Loudon are NASCAR Cup Series champions, with three of the other four going to drivers with multiple Championship 4 appearances. With two-thirds of the playoff field still each vying for their own first title, will the trend be bucked Sunday? (Credit: Racing Insights)
Date
Race Winner
Championship
9/22/2013
Matt Kenseth
2003
7/13/2014
Brad Keselowski
2012
9/21/2014
Joey Logano
2018, '22
7/19/2015
Kyle Busch
2015, '19
9/27/2015
Matt Kenseth
2003
7/17/2016
Matt Kenseth
2003
9/25/2016
Kevin Harvick
2014
7/16/2017
Denny Hamlin
—
9/24/2017
Kyle Busch
2015, '19
7/22/2018
Kevin Harvick
2014
7/21/2019
Kevin Harvick
2014
8/2/2020
Brad Keselowski
2012
7/18/2021
Aric Almirola
—
7/17/2022
Christopher Bell
—
7/17/2023
Martin Truex Jr.
2017
6/23/2024
Christopher Bell
—
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
Zane Smith was so close, he said he could taste his first NASCAR Cup Series victory on Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.
But sitting on the front row with only four laps separating him from the final restart and the checkered flag, Smith washed high against Carson Hocevar and opened the door for Christopher Bell to scoot by and ultimately win, preventing him from scoring that first win as the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford faded to third.
The defeat stung, but having a chance? Being in position that late in the game? That’s a feeling Smith’s missed since his days of stacking wins in the Craftsman Truck Series just two years ago.
“Man,” Smith said in a Tuesday teleconference, “when you’re trying to get your first win in the Cup Series — something you’ve just wanted to be in for your whole life — and then the opportunity is right in front of you (and) it’s going to be settled in a couple of minutes, yeah, there’s a lot of things running through your head. Like, man, pretty much everything that I have known in my career, I need to funnel it down to right now to see how I could possibly execute this race win. …
“I’ve worked for this all my life, and the opportunity is right here. Who knows if I’ll have this opportunity again?”
Ethan Smith | For NASCAR Digital Media
Those are the moments Smith lives for, at age 26, competing in his second full-time season at the highest level of NASCAR. The Huntington Beach, California native has been fighting for these opportunities for far longer than most people likely remember with a Truck debut in 2018 that came seven years ago. A full-time tenure from 2020-2023 led him to nine wins across four seasons, three Championship 4 appearances and a Truck title in 2022.
His Cup tenure — while young — has yet to be so fruitful. Bristol marked the third top five of his career and first with FRM. Across 74 starts, those quality finishes have been hard to come by.
“You get warned about that as the conversations get brought up of maybe you going to race on Sunday,” Smith said. “And, man, you could go through a stretch there without just winning something, and it takes a toll on you. Like, man, can I still do this? Do I still stay as locked in as I did? And you question why it’s not happening.”
But Smith has made peace with those struggles this week, with Bristol a boon to remind him he is improving race by race.
“Fortunately, we have a lot of data and analytics looking at where we can improve and maybe circling more than one reason why we’re not,” Smith said. “And I think we’re thankful for that because that could just naturally take a toll on a driver. But it was a good reminder on Saturday that I feel I still can win.”
A tough slate of results through July and August wasn’t representative of what Smith felt his finishes should have been, with multiple late incidents ousting him from sure top-15 results. As the driver, he feels it’s his responsibility to play “quarterback” and lead his team mentally through those heartbreaks.
“I’m just a big believer in, like, hard times build tougher people,” Smith said. “And I think through racing and doing this for a living […] you’re going to experience so many ups and downs. Regardless, I mean, even at the high, I feel that just keeping a level head goes a long way. You just don’t let your lows get too low. And so with that, I feel like that’s how we’ve been able to rebound.”
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday for its first visit to the “Granite State” since 2017. Teams will have a full 50-minute practice session on Friday (4:05 p.m. ET, FS2) before qualifying later in the afternoon (5:10 p.m. ET, FS2). Saturday’s race (Noon ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is the final event in the Round of 10, and two drivers will see their championship hopes come to and end.
The NASCAR Cup Series begins the Round of 12 in the 2025 playoffs with the Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Qualifying at the 1.058-miler begins at 4:10 p.m. ET on Saturday (truTV, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). A 60-minute practice split into two 25-minute groups with a 10-minute break in between is at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday, also on truTV.
