1. Will NASCAR and the teams make a deal?
Perhaps the most pressing story heading into this last stretch of the regular season will be NASCAR’s ongoing charter negotiations with the teams.
NASCAR has spent the past half a year insisting that a deal could come at anytime, while the teams have been clear that they are too far apart. A key new development was broken during the summer break which really does not paint these negotiations as going well.
Keep in mind that NASCAR indicated at one point that it wanted to get a deal done prior to the Clash in order to avoid potential team protests. It’s now almost mid-August and the protests may finally be coming.
It’s hard to imagine the owners splitting off from NASCAR. But it’s absolutely a possibility. I think a key aspect to this that not many take into account is who exactly is in the ownership ranks now.
Part of the reason NASCAR has almost always historically gotten its way on matters such as this is that the owners depended heavily on their race teams.
Go look at Jayski’s 1999 team chart and compare the owners there to 2024. Guys like Mark Melling, Ricky Rudd, Morgan-McClure, Andy Petree and Bill Davis all heavily depended on their NASCAR teams due to having invested so much of their wealth, percentage-wise, to their race teams.
Now there are so many extremely wealthy owners that are not living purse-to-purse. Rick Ware, the Wood Brothers and JTG Daugherty are the owners who don’t really fit that role, with the owners of the other 31 cars on track all being larger than the vast majority of them in 1999.
And the ones still there are larger than ever before. Roger Penske owns IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway outright now. I wrote a column right before the summer break saying NASCAR needs to respect the teams better as they are also partners with them. This is why that respect is deserved.
2. How will the remaining Silly Season dominoes fall?
There are now two Cup seats that are for sure open for 2025, with the big news of the break being that Spire Motorsports has chosen to move on from Corey LaJoie.
LaJoie first joined the team back in 2021 as its first full-time driver, and was able to perform well on drafting tracks while building a foundation for the team on other tracks.
But the reality is that this year been rough on LaJoie. The Kyle Busch incident at Pocono was a cherry on top of a rough year. With the influx of money the organization is now receiving from a lucrative Gainbridge sponsorship, the team had high hopes that LaJoie has not answered this season.
You can’t really say this then end up 28th in points a month before the playoffs start, especially with a rookie teammate in 24th.
Who will be in the No. 7 next year is an interesting question. One option the team has would be to retain Zane Smith after all, continuing its partnership with Trackhouse.
Bob Pockrass noted in his FOX Sports column that Justin Haley would be an option for the team as a de facto Hendrick Motorsports hire. It would make sense in that JR Motorsports doesn’t have as strong a driver lineup as it has had in prior seasons, and thus Haley would serve as a reserve driver Hendrick could call up in a pinch.
William Byron is the lone Hendrick free agent after next season, meaning Haley at Spire could serve as an insurance policy in case another team comes knocking for Byron.
As one purely hypothetical situation, if Denny Hamlin decided to retire or move away from Joe Gibbs Racing after next year, Byron would be a key target for JGR.
The third seat at Front Row Motorsports is still undecided. Noah Gragson and Todd Gilliland will be teamed up with somebody next season. LaJoie could be an option for this team. It would just be smart to have a veteran in the third car considering how young the lineup is otherwise.
3. Who will make it into the playoffs?
Although there’s still a possibility for a surprise winner at Daytona in a couple weeks, I’d be very surprised if there’s a new winner at any of the other three races.
The Cup field is a bit top-heavy right now. With several multiple-win drivers at least a race out of the regular season championship, winning more playoff points directly will take precedent over simply having a good points day and getting them through regular season points.
Bubba Wallace is currently just seven points behind Ross Chastain for the final spot in the playoffs. Wallace should pass Chastain, as he’s strong at most of the tracks in the run-up to the playoffs. Chastain, meanwhile, has just one top-10 finish in the last six races and is struggling to find momentum.
4. How will the option tire work at Richmond Raceway?
This weekend’s race at Richmond is the first time in many, many, many decades that NASCAR drivers will have multiple tire compounds to choose from in an official points race.
The tire wars with Hoosier back in the late 1980s and 1994 gave teams tire options, but they couldn’t just choose which within a race. Providing teams two sets of softer option tires should allow more comers and goers through a race, along with more passing as the option cars get around the prime cars.
For multi-compound NASCAR racing, that may well have happened at some point in the 1950s back in the crude early days of the series.
North Wilkesboro Speedway did not put on a great race with the tire choice. But North Wilkesboro is a completely different style of short track from Richmond. The multi-groove racing with long green flag runs should help evaluate just how well this concept works.
And it should be noted that, if this experiment fails again this weekend, the red letter option tires absolutely should not be thrown into the trashcan.
NASCAR races on road courses with an option tire would provide a completely new dimension, much the same as it has for IndyCar, and before that Formula 1.
Give teams multiple dry tire compounds to work with at Watkins Glen International next month and force them to run both compounds in the race at some point like those other two series do. Business would pick up on those tracks again in a hurry.
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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The Netflix series give some personality to a mostly vanilla series. I wouldn’t recognize most of the drivers if they were walking down the street.
The tire stuff stinks. This isn’t Indy Car. Everyone should have to run the same tire.
Teams should pass on all non-points races and any NASCAR non-race events to protest.
I think the multiple tire options will have little to no impact on the overall race. Just a publicity stunt.
Jeff won’t be letting Byron get away from where he is now, in the 24. Remember it was Jeff who was adamant that HMS sign Larson quickly. No way Denny gets Byron.