Stat Sheet: Brad Keselowski Becomes Next Gen’s 26th Winner. Who’s Next?

There are plenty of things to criticize about the Next Gen car, but the effect it’s had on organizational parity is not one of them.

By winning Sunday’s (May 12) Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, Brad Keselowski broke a 110-race winless drought to score his first win with RFK Racing and become the 26th unique winner in the Next Gen era.

Twenty-six. Think about that for a moment. Two winners are retired, while another is racing part-time (Shane van Gisbergen), which means that 66% of full-time drivers (23/35) in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season have won a Cup race with the Next Gen car.

Keselowski’s win means that only one full-time driver who won in the Gen 6 era has yet to win in the Next Gen car. And of the 11 full-time drivers that have yet to win a Cup race, only two have made more than 100 starts. More on them later.

Twenty-six winners. Who will be the 27th?

To kick this off, there have been six first-time Cup winners since the start of the Next Gen era in 2022. All but van Gisbergen scored their first win in the 2022 season, and half of the names on this list have gone on to win Cup multiple races.

Driver	First NG Win	Total NG Wins	NG Chronology
Austin Cindric	2022 Daytona 500	1	1
Chase Briscoe	2022 Phoenix 1	1	4
Ross Chastain	2022 COTA	4	6
Daniel Suarez	2022 Sonoma	2	12
Tyler Reddick	2022 Road America	6	13
Shane van Gisbergen	2023 Chicago Street	1	23

In addition to first-time winners, the Next Gen car has seen not one, not two, but six drivers snap a winless drought that spanned at least two seasons (72 races). Keselowski was the most recent addition to the list and he’s the only driver with more than three wins to have that long of a dry spell before winning with the new car.

Driver	Wins Before NG	First NG Win	Winless Drought	Total NG Wins	NG Chronology
Austin Dillon	3	2022 Daytona 2	78 Races	1	16
Erik Jones	2	2022 Southern 500	109 Races	1	17
Chris Buescher	1	2022 Bristol (Pavement)	222 Races	4	19
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	2	2023 Daytona 500	199 Races	1	20
Michael McDowell	1	2023 Indianpolis RC	94 Races	1	24
Brad Keselowski	35	2024 Darlington 1	110 Races	1	26

Driver	Wins Before NG	First NG Win	Total NG Wins	NG Chronology
Kurt Busch	33	2022 Kansas 1	1	11
Kevin Harvick	58	2022 Michigan	2	15

The remaining 12 winners won relatively early in the Next Gen era and are among the biggest names in the sport. William Byron leads all drivers with 11 wins in the Next Gen era, followed by Larson with nine and Denny Hamlin with eight.

Driver	Wins Before NG	First NG Win	Total NG Wins	NG Chronology
Kyle Larson	16	2022 Fontana	9	2
Alex Bowman	6	2022 Las Vegas 1	1	3
William Byron	2	2022 Atlanta 1	11	5
Denny Hamlin	46	2022 Richmond 1	8	7
Kyle Busch	59	2022 Bristol (Dirt)	4	8
Chase Elliott	13	2022 Dover	6	9
Joey Logano	27	2022 Darlington 1	5	10
Christopher Bell	1	2022 New Hampshire	6	14
Bubba Wallace	1	2022 Kansas 2	1	18
Martin Truex Jr.	31	2023 Dover	3	21
Ryan Blaney	7	2023 Charlotte (Oval)	3	22
AJ Allmendinger	2	2023 Charlotte (ROVAL)	1	25

That’s all the winners. Who can join them?

The only Cup winner who has yet to score a win in the Next Gen car is Justin Haley, who won his third career Cup start in the 2019 Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. He now has a 118-race winless drought, the longest active streak.

Haley almost returned to victory lane last year at the Chicago street course, but he settled for second after van Gisbergen prevailed with some late-race heroics in his Cup debut.

That leaves 11 full-time drivers who have yet to win. Two have more than 100 Cup starts, while four have more than two seasons of experience under their belts. Six of the 11 are under age 25, while four of the 11 are between 32 and 33 years old.

Driver	Age	Cup Starts w/o Win	Best Cup Finish	Career Laps Led
Corey LaJoie	32	249	4th	161
Ryan Preece	33	164	3rd	174
Harrison Burton	23	86	3rd	67
Todd Gilliland	23	85	4th	106
Ty Gibbs	21	64	2nd	349
Daniel Hemric	33	60	5th	36
John Hunter Nemechek	27	54	6th	21
Noah Gragson	25	52	3rd	12
Josh Berry	33	25	2nd	44
Carson Hocevar	21	22	10th	3
Zane Smith	24	22	10th	3

Of the drivers seeking their first Cup win, one name in particular stands out: Ty Gibbs.

He may be driving for one of the best teams in the garage, but Gibbs has made tremendous strides in his second full-time season. He’s seventh in points (the next-highest driver looking for their first win in Noah Gragson in 19th) and has earned four top fives and seven top 10s in 13 races to go along with 235 laps led and an average finish of 12.4. He scored a career-best finish of second this weekend at Darlington, and his first win is knocking on the door.

Josh Berry has shown flashes of brilliance in his rookie season, as he was one of the fastest cars at the short tracks Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond Raceway. Like Gibbs, he too is coming off of a season-best finish of third at Darlington.

Gragson has impressed with five top-10 finishes in a SHR team that was expected to struggle at the start of the year, while Todd Gilliland and Corey LaJoie are frequent contenders in the superspeedway races at Daytona, Talladega Superspeedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway.

That 27th winner (and 205th overall in Cup) will be coming soon, and it’s great for NASCAR and its fans to see so many different faces at the front of the field and in victory lane.