Jimmy Carter-NASCAR connection ran from Atlanta all the way to White House

Posted on December 31, 2024December 31, 2024 by Nate Ryan

Shortly after waving the green flag on the April 4, 1971 Cup Series race at Atlanta International Raceway, Jimmy Carter made his passion for NASCAR abundantly clear.

This was no transactional photo op for a U.S. presidential candidate visiting a race track.

“I’m really proud to be back here; it’s been one of the favorite sports of my life,” Carter told the Universal Racing Network during the race broadcast. “My wife and I have been racing fans for more than 25 years and just to see this sport develop into a worldwide effort where the race car drivers are becoming worldwide heroes is really thrilling to me.

“I’m very glad to see the Atlanta Raceway recuperate from those first long numbers of years with too much rain. … This is a kind of race day that’s exciting for fans all over the world.”

President Carter died at 100 on Dec. 29 as the oldest living ex-president in history, sparking a torrent of conversation dissecting whether the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner did more after leaving office or during his single term as the leader of the free world in the late 1970s.

But there’s no doubt Carter was the most NASCAR-friendly U.S. president in history — a legacy cemented years before he occupied the White House.

As Georgia governor from 1971-75, he hosted three NASCAR dinners when drivers, team owners, officials and media were in town for Cup races at the speedway south of Atlanta. After attending the driver meeting for the March 29, 1970 race, Carter said he told his wife, Rosalynn, that “if I am elected, I’m going to have those guys out to the mansion the first time I get a chance.”

Just a few months after assuming the Peach State’s highest office, Carter feted a group of 26 drivers at the governor’s mansion in Atlanta and spent time regaling two of the top three qualifiers at the speedway earlier in the day — seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt (who won from the pole position three days later for one of his seven Cup victories).

NASCAR car owner Bud Moore chats with Jimmy Carter during one of Carter’s many visits to what is now Atlanta Motor Speedway. (Getty Images)

“You two have been my heroes for more than 10 years,” Carter told Foyt and Petty, according to an April 2, 1971 story in the Atlanta Constitution. “This is the greatest honor I have had since I got into politics.”

Carter traced his love of racing to attending dirt tracks in North Carolina and Virginia. After the 1.54-mile oval in Hampton, Georgia, opened in 1960, he was a track fixture — though a story that he was a ticket vendor seems apocryphal. In an interview with NASCAR Productions for the 2015 documentary “The Perfect Storm” (about the 1979 Daytona 500), Carter didn’t recall working at Atlanta Motor Speedway but had fond memories of several races there — as did the drivers who had met him.

With NASCAR still primarily a regional entity, President Carter’s Southern roots and rural upbringing resonated with a cadre of blue-collar stars who raved about a former peanut farmer born in a home without running water or electricity. Carter’s faith-driven and humble authenticity left a mark with many NASCAR Hall of Famers.

Before the March 21, 1976 race at Atlanta, longtime NASCAR journalist George Cunningham conducted a presidential straw poll of nine stars in the 36-car field. Five said they planned to vote for Carter if he became the Democratic nominee (three split their votes between Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Wallace, and a fourth abstained).

No one stumped harder for Carter than three-time Cup champion Cale Yarborough, who was a part-time politician himself. After becoming the first Republican since Reconstruction elected to the Florence County council, he was re-elected as a Democrat in 1976 — switching parties because of his fervent support for Carter.

“If I’m going to work for him, I should be in the same party,” Yarborough told Cunningham. “Carter is the best man, and I believe he will be elected. He’s turned on 90 percent of the country’s big news media already.”

Buddy Baker also was smitten. “One thing for sure, we don’t need any cowboy actors in the White House,” Baker said in a reference to Reagan (who would beat Carter for the presidency in 1980). “I’m for Carter because he seems conscientious and a good person. That’s about all you can judge by because they all sound alike. Besides, it’s nice to be able to say you had dinner with a president.”

Junior Johnson appreciated Carter as a Washington outsider with practicable sensibility. “Ain’t a lot of people got a hold of that man yet, and I haven’t seen him promising anybody anything,” Johnson told Cunningham before the 1976 race.

But Carter made good on a famous campaign promise he made later that weekend in the drivers meeting — celebrating stock car racing in the nation’s capitol.

NASCAR received a triumphant White House welcome Sept. 13, 1978, with a buffet dinner on the South Lawn. A delegation including Yarborough, David Pearson, Benny Parsons, Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr. was hosted by the First Lady, who served roast beef, ham and cornbread. Willie Nelson entertained a raucous crowd with a rollicking set of “Whiskey River,” “Crazy,” “Amazing Grace,” “Georgia” and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

Jimmy Carter missed the gala because he was preoccupied with the biggest accomplishment for world peace during his presidency — brokering the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.

He still delivered a tremendous boost to NASCAR’s profile — just five months before the sport got another jolt of mainstream electricity with the epochal 1979 Daytona 500.

“Jimmy told us if he ever got to be president, we would share in some of the glory,” Pearson told Atlanta columnist Lewis Grizzard at the Washington, D.C., extravaganza. “Here we are.”

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.

President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalyn Carter invited NASCAR stars as guests to the White House in 1978. While Carter was called away on business, pictured are Cale Yarborough, First Lady Rosalyn Carter, David Pearson, Benny Parsons and Bud Moore. (Getty Images)

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Zack Albert

William Byron headed to the Championship 4 round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for a second consecutive year in 2024. He made that return trip with Rudy Fugle, a veteran crew chief who’s been a steady companion for some of his most successful stretches — including the last four seasons with Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 24 Chevrolet team.

Byron and Fugle head to Year 5 of their partnership with aspirations of returning to the Cup Series’ title fray at Phoenix Raceway next November, potentially adding more keystone victories along the way. The 27-year-old driver added a big catch in 2024 as the Daytona 500 champion, tacking on two more regular-season wins to clinch safe passage into the playoffs.

The bonds between Byron and Fugle were formed in the driver’s breakout 2016 season in the Craftsman Truck Series, where the two guided a Kyle Busch Motorsports entry to seven wins, falling just shy of a Champ 4 spot. The two were reunited at the Cup Series level in 2021, and the No. 24 team has barely slowed since, building on their mutual reliance.

“Just trust, confidence, knowledge, work ethic — there’s a lot of different things that are important, key pillars to a relationship like that. So yeah, I feel like he’s done a great job over the years,” Byron said Nov. 22, noting the span of Fugle’s Cup Series tenure. “I mean, he’s getting a lot of experience at this. So yeah, I’m just thankful to have him as a crew chief. It’s a tremendous commitment, and he does it really well.”

Their momentum was not enough to seal a first Cup Series crown for Byron this season, as eventual champ Joey Logano led a convincing Team Penske 1-2 finish in the finale. A reporter planted the notion at the NASCAR Awards that perhaps Fugle had taken the loss harder than Byron after the team’s third-place result in the final standings, given their post-race demeanors. That suggestion prompted Byron to respond with “maybe.”

“I mean, I think he just puts a lot into it, and our roles are different and he wears his emotions on his sleeve, and I love that about him,” Byron added. “So yeah, we’re in a good place. All of our postseason meetings and talks about Phoenix are in a great spot, and we’re ready to go next year. So we have a lot of goals to achieve next year and I feel like he’s in a good place. But yeah, emotions are raw right after the race and sometimes in the car, it’s a little bit different picture than what they see. So yeah, I think it was just kind of real for him.”

About Phoenix, then. The relatively low-banked 1-mile track that will again host the championship race next year has received offseason notes of emphasis by Byron and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates as an area where the organization could use improvement. Similar-length tracks at New Hampshire and Gateway fall under the same heading.

MORE: Power Rankings: 2025 preview | By the Numbers: Cup Series 2024

Understandably selfishly, Byron says he wants performance enrichment across the board for 2025, weighing both the good with the bad from last season. Despite the three victories, his laps-led total for the season (357) was the lowest of the four-year Byron-Fugle era. In positive contrast, Byron ended the year with seven straight top-six finishes in one of the circuit’s most consistent postseason runs.

“I think it was a good year. I’d like to have more speed next year and just lead more laps,” Byron said. “I think a lot of that’s in my control and our team’s control, and I think we can work on that in the offseason, just kind of getting a little bit better at certain tracks. Definitely Phoenix is high on that list. We’ve got a lot of room to improve there. I thought our potential was a little bit better this year compared to last year, honestly, but yeah, we just need to keep working on those tracks and then just lead more laps, and I think there’s a few different ways you do that. So we were really good down the stretch. I mean, the last seven weeks, all top six. So I think that was really, really strong and hard to do, so just need to work on a couple of little things.”

When Byron kicks off the new campaign, he’ll have a near-omnipresent reminder of last year’s successes, striding back into Daytona International Speedway as the defending Daytona 500 champ. He said that among his goals for 2025 is adding more prestigious wins to his career tally — specifically mentioning the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis and the Coca-Cola 600 in his hometown of Charlotte.

He’s held a nearly yearlong reign as the winner of the “Great American Race,” but Byron said the magnitude of the achievement is just now beginning to take hold.

“It’s pretty awesome,” said Byron, who will aim to become the 500’s first back-to-back winner since Denny Hamlin (2019-20). “I mean, I think a lot of people asked me that throughout the spring and the summer, and I didn’t really know how to answer, because I was still trying to achieve the championship and everything like that, just week to week. So yeah, I’ve reflected on it a little bit more now, and it’s awesome for our team. It’s a huge accomplishment, and hopefully we can get more of those crown-jewel wins. That would be my goal.”

Posted on December 30, 2024December 30, 2024 by Zack Albert

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Crew chief: Rudy Fugle
Final 2024 ranking: 3rdKey stats: Three wins, 13 top fives, 21 top 10s, one pole position, 357 laps led

How 2024 ended: Byron bulled his way through the playoffs, then sweated out a nail-biter in the Round of 8 finale at Martinsville to claim the last spot in the Championship 4 field. His second consecutive appearance in the title-deciding event, however, had the same ending — a top-five finish in the race, and third overall in the Cup Series standings.

Best race: It’s tough to top winning the Cup Series’ biggest prize of all, and Byron added some sentimental elements to his first Daytona 500 victory in this year’s season opener. His triumph coincided with the 40th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports’ NASCAR Cup Series debut, kicking off the yearlong celebration of the organization’s stock-car racing milestone. Byron’s win was also the first in the “Great American Race” for the No. 24 since 2005, when Hendrick vice chairman Jeff Gordon won the crown-jewel event for a third and final time.

Other season highlights: Byron’s three victories in 2024 all came in the first eight races of the season. His last, however, was part of a special commemoration of the organization’s 40th-anniversary campaign, with all four Rick Hendrick-owned Chevrolets draped in ruby-red paint schemes for the springtime event at Martinsville Speedway. Byron led the way in a 1-2-3 Hendrick sweep ahead of teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, and the group celebrated with a massive team photo with dozens of assembled guests — all at the track where Hendrick Motorsports scored its first Cup Series win with Geoff Bodine back in 1984.

Stat to Know: Byron didn’t surpass any of his career-best marks in 2024, but his consistency in the home stretch of the Cup Series season was the best of anyone. His average finish for the final seven events was a remarkable 3.9 after a string of all top-six finishes to close it out.

Quotable: “It went well. Daytona 500, Championship 4, all that was good, but still more to go get. I thought it was kind of a growing year for us in a lot of different ways. I felt like we went through a lot of adversity and yeah, we came out the other side in a position to compete for the championship.” — Byron on assessing his season.

MORE: Byron through the years | Byron’s Martinsville milestone

Looking ahead: Speaking before the NASCAR Awards, Byron was bullish on continuing his relationship with longtime crew chief Rudy Fugle, who has been atop the No. 24 pit box for 12 Byron victories in the last four seasons. He also circled where improvement was needed: on tracks roughly a mile in length such as Gateway, New Hampshire and Phoenix, where the championship will be settled again in 2025. Byron won on a superspeedway, a road course and a short track last season, and the odds of the 27-year-old driver extending his win streak to six consecutive seasons seem highly likely.

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Zack Albert

When we last spoke with Tyler Reddick, the timing coincided with the year-ending NASCAR Awards in Charlotte. His first Championship 4 appearance had ended less than two weeks earlier at Phoenix Raceway, resulting in a fourth-place finish in the 2024 Cup Series standings.

At the time, Reddick said he hadn’t spared a moment to reflect on the Phoenix finale or the season that had been. His prime focus was on a host of things that had been added to his offseason list — a honeymoon on the heels of his July wedding, holiday time with family, and home-improvement work after a recent move.

A debrief and a refocus on the 2025 campaign, he said, will come in due time.

“I don’t know if ‘reflect’ is really the word that comes to mind for me,” Reddick said Nov. 22. “I have plenty of good notes to go back through. We all do. I think at some point we’ll review the season as a whole. But yeah, I think at moments I probably have, but not for long periods of time. I’ve just been doing other things outside of racing that’s taking up all my day.”

When that 2024 recap with his 23XI Racing team comes, plenty of positives will be there for review. Reddick won three times during the season, notching his first superspeedway victory (Talladega in April) and adding another win at Michigan in August during a sizzling summer stretch for the No. 45 Toyota group. That hot streak helped him seal the Regular Season Championship by one point over Kyle Larson.

His momentum dissipated once the playoffs began, but the postseason provided Reddick with a defining highlight at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The 28-year-old driver shook off a slight tire disadvantage and bypassed both Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney on the final lap for a victory he said, “shouldn’t have worked out and we found a way to overcome the odds.”

That win clinched a Championship 4 spot for Reddick among the title-eligible quartet, alongside Blaney, William Byron and eventual champ Joey Logano. Reddick never quite contended in the season-ending event, placing sixth overall as the last of the four at Phoenix, but he lauded both the team’s ability to bounce back from a subpar practice and his own capabilities when dealing with the postseason stressors.

“From that point, from I’d say the time I’d woke up after winning Homestead, I was in a pretty, pretty good spot mentally, knowing what I needed to do, what to be focused on,” Reddick said. “It felt like a familiar place from the times doing it on the Xfinity side, so yeah, I think I have a good place there. We just know that we’ve got to hopefully find some more speed when we go back (to Phoenix) in the spring, and hopefully it moves us in the right direction for next fall.”

That preparation will come once the rest of his personal list gets in order.

“Working on other things outside of racing, catching up on life, honey-do’s, whatever you want to call them,” Reddick says. “So yeah, once I get all that stuff in a good place, I feel like I’ll be decompressed and ready to get back just focused on racing.”

Posted on December 27, 2024December 27, 2024 by Zack Albert

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota
Crew chief: Billy Scott
Final 2023 ranking: 4thKey stats: Three wins, 12 top fives, 21 top 10s, three pole positions, 597 laps led

How 2024 ended: Reddick’s playoff ride was loaded down with wild swings in momentum, but his points edge from securing the Regular Season Championship and a well-timed triumph at Homestead-Miami Speedway were enough to thrust him into his first Championship 4 appearance for the Nov. 10 season finale at Phoenix. Reddick and the No. 45 Toyota group struggled to contend in the year-ending event, finishing last among the title-eligible quartet in sixth place overall.

Best race: Two top candidates for this accolade stand out — one race that Reddick won, and one that he didn’t. Reddick drove to a signature victory in the middle race of the postseason’s Round of 8, claiming the pole position and then rallying with a bold final lap at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The 28-year-old driver went from third place at the white flag, bypassing Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney in the course of the final mile and a half for his third victory of the year and a berth in the final. In the race that he didn’t win, Reddick overcame a significant midrace bout with illness at the demanding Darlington Raceway, gutting out a 10th-place finish to ice the regular-season title by just one point over Kyle Larson.

Other season highlights: Reddick sealed two more victories in 2024, landing his first superspeedway win at Talladega in April, then adding an August triumph at Michigan just before the regular season ended. He also set the tone for the season ahead with a victory in a Daytona 500 qualifying race. His most consistent work, however, came as springtime gave way to summer, when he assembled a string of 10 top-10 finishes in an 11-race stretch. That solid run put Reddick in the points lead, the first time a 23XI Racing driver has topped the Cup Series regular-season standings since the organization’s debut in 2021.

Stat to Know: Reddick established personal-best marks in four statistical categories last season — top fives (12), top 10s (21), laps led (597) and average finish (13.2). He was also one of just five drivers to notch at least three wins and three poles during the 2024 campaign.

Quotable: “I think it’s something that I’ve always had, but a good reminder of it this year, just determination. Pushing through the tough days. That word comes to mind the most: determination.” — Tyler Reddick, asked what he learned about himself during his playoff march and his season overall.

MORE: Reddick through the years | All of Reddick’s Cup Series wins

Looking ahead: Reddick said at the season-ending NASCAR Awards that he’ll find time to reflect on the 2024 season after “catching up on life” with a personal offseason to-do list. The California native provided a small competition look-ahead, however, saying that he and the No. 45 group learned plenty about each other last year, and that the team will aim to find more speed at Phoenix — which is again the site of the championship race in 2025. No major changes are in store for the No. 45 team’s personnel lineup, but the 23XI Racing organization will grow next season with the addition of a third car — the No. 35 Toyota driven by Riley Herbst, who makes the jump up from the Xfinity Series to team with Reddick and fellow 23XI driver Bubba Wallace.

Posted on December 26, 2024 by Cameron Richardson

Five years down in the NASCAR Cup Series, Christopher Bell continues to rise as a superstar in the sport.

He matched a career-best in wins with three during the 2024 campaign and set new highs in top fives (15) and top 10s (23) while making the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season.

Despite having his best Cup season to date, Bell missed out on a third straight chance at the Bill France Cup in Phoenix after being eliminated at Martinsville Speedway on the final lap due to a safety violation. While Bell was left frustrated in the moment, he took the time to reflect on some of his high points from a successful year.

“Honestly, [Las] Vegas [fall] was one of our all-around best days,” Bell said on Nov. 22 ahead of the NASCAR Awards. “We didn’t get the win. But as a team, the pit crew, [crew chief] Adam’s [Stevens] strategy, myself driving, like we executed that day almost perfectly. I would say Vegas is one of our best races that we had all year. Charlotte was shaping up to be. It’s a shame that it got shortened because I would have loved to see it go the distance. But I felt like Charlotte had that potential of [being] similar to how Vegas turned out. I think that those two races stand out. Phoenix [spring] was awesome. Gateway was awesome. There’s a lot of highs for sure.”

That Las Vegas playoff race in October was the ultimate deciding factor of Bell’s season. He led 155 laps, which was his most in a race in 2024 to highlight a total of 1,145 circuits out front during the year, but a strategy gamble from Joey Logano paid out for the No. 22 Team Penske team as they had enough fuel to get to the checkered flag while Bell settled for second. A win would’ve guaranteed Bell’s berth to Phoenix, which would’ve eliminated the events of Martinsville just two weeks later.

Vegas defined 2024 as a whole for the JGR organization. From Bell to Denny Hamlin, Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr., all four cars and teams had race-winning capabilities on a weekly basis but the final win of the season for JGR came in … June at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Bell was blunt in the frustrations of the organization not winning in the last five months of the year.

“That’s sad,” Bell said. “Looking back at Nashville, Nashville was a potential win. Chicago was a potential win. Vegas was a potential win. Like there’s so many races that happened in between our last win and the end of the year that we let slip away. We need to clean it up and if we keep bringing the same car potential back to the racetrack, I think that, hopefully, I will be able to do my job and close the races out.”

To turn those shortcomings into victories, JGR made organizational changes as Chris Gabehart, Hamlin’s crew chief for the past six seasons, will now serve as competition director for JGR while Chris Gayle moves from Gibbs to atop the pit box for Hamlin and the No. 11 team.

MORE: JGR makes organizational changes for 2025 | Hamlin ‘shocked’ Gabehart won’t crew chief No. 11 in 2025

“I think it has potential to help out all the teams,” Bell said of the changes. “Gabehart is a incredibly smart person. He was a huge asset to the 11 car and I think moving him to oversee the crew chiefs and be able to provide input and knowledge and just kind of keep all of the teams in line is a solid move. I think it has potential to increase the performance of all the teams.”

With JGR lifting restrictions on dirt racing, it opens the door for Bell and incoming driver Chase Briscoe to keep competing before The Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium arrives in February.

Bell said he’ll ‘definitely’ be racing at some point but doesn’t have anything set in stone just yet.

“One thing that I typically do whenever it comes to dirt racing is I don’t really like to make a schedule,” Bell added. “I really just kind of go week by week, and if my week turns out to be quiet, I’ll look for opportunities to go race, and then a matter of who has a car available, what car I can get in and stuff like that. So I’m definitely not gonna make a schedule, so to say, but I’ll just kind of take it week by week. It’s nice to know that it is in my hands, and our competition staff’s hands. I’m excited about it and I’m certainly looking forward to reconnecting with my dirt fans.”

As of now, Bell said he doesn’t have plans to compete at the Chili Bowl but will be, at least, in attendance at the Tulsa Shootout in his home state of Oklahoma.

Both Bell and 2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson are multi-time winners of the Chili Bowl and with Bell allowed to race on dirt once again, anticipation builds for the two NASCAR heavyweights to do battle in the discipline.

“He’s [Larson] gonna have the upper hand for a little bit,” Belt admitted. “He’s got a two-year head start on me, so I’m gonna have to get my dirt shoes underneath me again and get back up to speed. But I hope, at some point, I can get back up to speed. That’s gonna be the tough part is just being out of the car for so long. Hopefully, it’s like riding a bike. I guess we’re about to find out.”

A return to roots and some time away from the stock car will allow for Bell to get his mind off the pressure of winning in the Cup Series. But once the No. 20 hauler heads down to Daytona to open the season, the expectations will be through the roof for Bell to ascend the mountain following a monster 2024 season.

“It definitely leaves me optimistic and hopeful for what’s to come,” Bell said on his 2024 performance. “I’ve said this same thing, literally for the past two years or three years now, after the season’s over, that we still haven’t performed up to our potential. The 20 team keeps setting new highs and new personal bests, but even this year, we left a ton on the table. It just makes me optimistic and excited about what’s to come, knowing that we can perform better than we did this year.”

Posted on December 26, 2024December 26, 2024 by Cameron Richardson

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Crew Chief: Adam Stevens
Final 2024 Ranking: 5th
Key stats: Three wins, 15 top fives, 23 top 10s, three poles, 1,145 laps led

How 2024 ended: Entering the postseason, Bell was among the favorites to hoist his first Bill France Cup but his hopes were dashed in the penultimate race of 2024 at Martinsville Speedway. Bell was penalized for a safety violation on the final lap trying to gain enough spots to surpass William Byron for the final transfer spot to the Championship 4. Bell’s lap was disqualified, which gave the fourth spot to Byron. In the finale at Phoenix, Bell led 143 laps and finished fifth to cap a fifth-place finish in the standings.

Best race: There’s a handful of options to select as the No. 20 driver’s best race of 2024 but New Hampshire stood out from the rest as Bell completed a weekend sweep in the New England region. The Cup race in Loudon was a first for NASCAR as rain tires were used in green-flag conditions to finish the race. Bell proved to be the best in both dry and wet conditions around the flat, 1.058-mile oval as he led 149 of 305 laps en route to his third and final victory of the season.

Other season highlights: Despite not winning the championship, Bell’s second half of 2024 can’t go overlooked. In a 15-race stretch from Indianapolis to the Phoenix finale, Bell scored 12 top 10s, with nine of those coming inside the top five. Bell’s first win came at Phoenix where he was the class of the field in the closing laps, setting a margin of victory record in the Next Gen era at 5.465 seconds. He would also grab his first checkered flag in a Crown Jewel race, winning a rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600.

Stat to Know: Bell’s 1,145 laps led were second most in the Cup Series in 2024, behind Kyle Larson’s whopping 1,700 laps. He led 100 laps or more in six races, highlighted by leading a combined 280 circuits in back-to-back weekends at New Hampshire and Nashville.

Quotable: “It definitely leaves me optimistic and hopeful for what’s to come. I’ve said this same thing, literally for the past two years or three years now, after the season’s over, that we still haven’t performed up to our potential. The 20 team keeps setting new highs and new personal bests, but even this year, we left a ton on the table. It just makes me optimistic and excited about what’s to come, knowing that we can perform better than we did this year.” — Christopher Bell on his 2024 performance

MORE: Bell quells end of 2024; ‘left a lot on the table’ | 2024-25 Silly Season news

Looking ahead: Five Cup Series seasons down and Bell has grown into a bonafide title contender on an annual basis. The next step for Bell is to break through for his first Cup championship, which is much more easier said than done. He’ll have some young competition alongside him at JGR next season as Ty Gibbs enters his third season while Chase Briscoe replaces Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 19 Toyota. Bell also revealed Dec. 10 that he’ll return to the Chili Bowl after JGR lifted restrictions on their drivers competing in dirt-racing events. Bell and Briscoe will be among Cup Series drivers entered in the event.

Posted on December 23, 2024December 23, 2024 by Jerry Bonkowski

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: Kyle Larson, No. 5, Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet
Crew chief: Cliff Daniels
Final 2024 Ranking: 6th
Key stats: Six wins, 15 top fives, 18 top 10s, 5 poles, 1,700 laps led

How 2024 ended: Despite rough outings at Atlanta 2 (37th) and Kansas 2 (26th) and falling short of the Championship 4 round, Larson had an otherwise strong overall showing in the playoffs, including wins at Bristol Night Race and on the Roval at Charlotte, plus five top-five finishes in the post-season overall, including finishes of third and fourth respectively at Martinsville and the season finale in Phoenix.

Best race: Larson earned wins in 2024 at Las Vegas, Kansas, Sonoma, Indianapolis, Bristol and the Charlotte Roval. But without question, his strongest performance in all six of those victories was the night playoff race at Bristol. It was one of the most dominating performances Larson has had in his Cup career, leading 462 of the event’s 500 laps (including 251 of the last 252 laps). It was like the California native was shot from a cannon and didn’t stop until he took the checkered flag.

Other season highlights: Larson also dominated en route to his win at Las Vegas 1, leading 181 of 267 laps. And, although he ultimately finished fourth, he led 263 of the 367 laps in the final regular season race of the season at Darlington.

Stat to know: Larson has been a winning machine ever since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021. Of his 29 career wins in the NASCAR Cup Series, 23 have come with Team Hendrick over the last four seasons, including 10 in his championship-winning first season with the organization in 2021 and his six wins in 2024. Also of note, since joining Hendrick Motorsports, Larson has earned 13 poles (of the 21 he’s tallied in his Cup career).

Quotable: “It was a great year. I was super happy with the performance of our race team all year long. We had a ton of speed from Race 1 to Race 38 (including two exhibition races), really. I was happy. Obviously, you want to make the final four and have a shot at the championship, but I also understand the format and know how crazy it can be, so I don’t let finishing sixth in points take anything away from our season. We led the series in most every category, so I’m really proud of the team and their hard work. And I think we left some out on the table, so I’m excited about next year and hope we can continue to evolve and get stronger as a team and win some more races and lead more laps. … I’m hoping for more good things for next year and I’m already excited to get the year started.”

Looking ahead: Larson has always been the kind of driver who uses misfortune or frustration in one season as motivation for the following season. Example: missed 32 races in 2020 due to suspension and then returned to win his first Cup championship the following season in 2021. Having come so close and falling short of the Championship 4 round in 2024 – and finishing sixth overall – will definitely serve as great inspiration and motivation for what he hopes will be an even stronger season in 2025 and potentially earn his second career Cup championship.

Posted on December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 by Holly Cain

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: Chase Elliott, No. 9, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Crew chief: Alan Gustafson
Final 2024 ranking: 7th
Key stats: One win, 11 top fives, 19 top 10s, one pole, 431 laps led

How 2024 ended: A year after missing the Cup Series Playoffs for the first time in his championship career, Elliott answered with a strong title run in 2024. He earned top-10 finishes in seven of the 10 playoff races, including a playoff-best showing of runner-up at Bristol Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, the race that set the Championship 4. The 2020 champ was eliminated from title contention in the penultimate round. He led 218 laps in the 10-race post-season stretch — more than half his laps led all season. Ultimately, he finished seventh in the championship — an eighth top-10 finish in the championship in nine full-time seasons.

Best race: Elliott earned his only victory — first in two seasons — on the high banks at Texas Motor Speedway in April. He led 39 laps, including the final 17 in an overtime thriller, to claim the win and his ticket to the 2024 playoffs. It was his 19th career Cup Series win and his first series win ever at Texas, a venue where he scored his first career Xfinity Series win in 2014 at 18 years old.

Other season highlights: Elliott put together three top-10 streaks of at least three races over the season. First, early in the year at Richmond Raceway, Martinsville and Texas. Again from Pocono Raceway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the Richmond fall race. Finally, he ended the season with three straight top 10s at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Martinsville and Phoenix Raceway. He led double-digit laps seven times, including a season-best 129 laps in his runner-up finish in the Martinsville playoff race. Six of his top-five finishes were top-three showings – the win at Texas, runner-up efforts at Bristol and Martinsville (fall) and third-place finishes at Martinsville (spring), Kansas Speedway (spring) and Iowa Speedway. Elliott also opened the season with 19 straight top-20 finishes.

Stat to know: Elliott’s return to winning form means he’s won at least one race in six of the last seven seasons. His double-digit top-five and top-10 efforts matched a standard he’s had in seven of the last eight years. He was running at the finish at all but two races — tying another career-high mark, along with his average finish of 11.7 being his best mark since 2021 (11.4).

Quotable: “I find a lot of pride in our closing three or four weeks of the season, and just our performance, I thought, was in a really good spot. When I think about that and if we can just carry that forward to next year, I think we’ll have a lot of great opportunities. And I think we intend to do that.

“… We were really, really solid in a lot of areas, truthfully. The two things we didn’t do, unfortunately, were the most important things, and that’s leading laps and winning more races. We were leading more laps there at the end of the season, and those are the types of things that give you more opportunities.” — Elliott on closing the season.

MORE: Chase Elliott grades his ’24 campaign, looks ahead to next year

Looking ahead: Elliott was encouraged with the way this season finished and in particular, his three top-10 finishes to close out the race calendar. It’s the kind of momentum his team hopes to immediately capitalize on in the new year. Capturing the win at Texas means he’s now earned victories at 15 different tracks — from short tracks to famed road courses and from the superspeedway to 1.5-milers that make up the majority of the schedule. Elliott is optimistic that 2025 is a chance to show the Alan Gustafson-led team is back to the kind of form that produced five consecutive multi-win years from 2018-2022 and included the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series championship. Expectations are high on the No. 9 team, and that’s exactly what Elliott insists upon.

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Cameron Richardson

Editor’s note: This continues the series in which we review each 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs driver in reverse order of championship finish.

Season in review: Denny Hamlin, No. 11, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Crew Chief: Chris Gabehart
Final 2024 Ranking: 8th
Key stats: Three wins, 12 top fives, 18 top 10s, three poles, 943 laps led

How 2024 ended: With Martinsville Speedway being one of Hamlin’s best tracks, it seemed like a Championship 4 berth was all but guaranteed. However, a practice crash sent Hamlin to the rear at the start of the penultimate race of the year. He rallied to score a fifth-place result but did not have the points to surpass William Byron for the final ticket to Phoenix as Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and Ryan Blaney all managed to win in the Round of 8 from below the elimination line. Hamlin would’ve been in a good spot to point into the Championship 4 had it not been for a massive L2-level penalty in August that cost the No. 11 team 75 driver and owner points, including 10 playoff points.

Best race: Arguably the most impressive performance of 2024, Hamlin overcame an event marked by extreme tire wear at Bristol Motor Speedway to score his first of three wins in the past season. The No. 11 driver led 163 of the 500-lap event, while all but five drivers took the checkered flag a lap down. In total, there were a whopping 54 lead changes until Hamlin took command in the final 50 laps and fended off teammate Martin Truex Jr. to score his fourth victory on the concrete short track.

Other season highlights: Hamlin followed up his Bristol win quickly with a Richmond Raceway victory just two weeks later. In April, he held off a hard-charging Kyle Larson over the final laps to win at Dover Motor Speedway, giving Hamlin three checkered flags in the first 11 races.

Stat to know: Between Sonoma Raceway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Hamlin suffered the worst seven-race stretch of his career since 2013, scoring an average finish of 23.1, per Racing Insights.

Quotable: “The first few days was a shock, but I’m moving on,” Hamlin said. “There’s nothing I can do to change anything that happened, and JGR is doing what they feel is best for, them and I totally understand that. And if all of our program gets better, the 11 car’s gonna run better as well, right? And I think that all of us, all the teams, knew that we needed to have better results than what we had at the end of the year. They feel like this is the change they need to [make] to get that and that the 11 team will benefit from those changes.” — Hamlin on Gabehart moving to competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing

MORE: JGR moves Gabehart to competition director for 2025 | Hamlin’ shocked’ Gabehart won’t crew chief No. 11 in 2025

Looking ahead: At 44 years of age, that window for Hamlin’s prime inches closer to its end, but as of now, he’s shown no sign of slowing down and will be a title contender going into next season. A championship is all that eludes Hamlin’s illustrious Cup career, and now he’ll have to do it with Chris Gayle atop the box for the No. 11 Toyota team.