Through 31 races of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, the quality of competition has rarely been higher. Eighteen different winners in a single year seems like a home run stat when it appears on paper.
Eighteen winners show how close the teams are to each other in the Next Gen car. Every driver has a fan base, whether big or small, and more drivers in victory lane equals more excitement to go around. In an era where a charter is vital to the survival of a full-time team, an influx of winners means more owners see an adequate return on their investments.
The best teams and drivers still put up the best results, but the large gap between the elite and small teams has been bridged. The number of teams in the Cup garage that have the ability to compete for a win on any given Sunday is the highest it’s been in decades.
So what’s the problem? Turns out leaving everyone created equal may not translate into growing a larger viewing audience for which the sport is looking.
Viewers are captivated by and drawn to greatness. The greatest teams, the greatest players, and in the case of NASCAR, the greatest drivers. Look no further than the popularity that Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon experienced during the 1990s, and how their rivalry was one of the catalysts to launching NASCAR into mainstream, national success.
Is that to say underdog winners are bad and that NASCAR’s greatest talents should be the only ones winning races? Of course not. Everyone loves an underdog story and some level of parity. But when underdogs win on a regular basis, they’re no longer underdogs.
A system like NCAA’s March Madness works so well because fans are treated to early underdog Cinderella stories that they so desperately crave but also get to see the best teams and the biggest names battle for the championship in the end. NASCAR needs those underdog and feel-good stories from time to time, but it also needs stars, brands and recognizable names to show up in the end.
Too much parity isn’t good in the same way that too much domination isn’t either. There needs to be the perfect mix of underdog stories and elite talents, and it’s a hard balance for any professional sports league to pull off.
It’s a never-ending tug of war, and the equalization of the Cup field with the Next Gen car pulled it in the wrong direction.
When everyone has a chance to win, fewer drivers stand out in the crowd. The best drivers still put up the best results, but even the best drivers have had pedestrian stats compared to the heights reached before 2022.
And when it comes to attracting casual observers or developing popular household names NASCAR needs, sports lose a lot of their prestige when it appears that everyone takes a turn at winning.
Of course, there were 19 winners in the 2001 season, as well as 18 in 2002 and 17 in 2003. What’s the difference between that and the abundance of winners we’ve seen in the Next Gen car?
The difference is that the early 2000s was the financial peak of NASCAR. Sponsorship was abundant, money grew on trees and even the smallest Cup teams and largest NASCAR Xfinity Series organizations had full seasons covered by national brands and Fortune 500 companies. The sport had the deepest bench it’s ever had, and there were weekly fields of 43 cars instead of 36, plus many others that failed to qualify each week. Naturally, more teams had a chance to shine and the money to compete.
The parity brought about by the Next Gen car is artificial. It’s still parity, yes, but it’s a product of the standardization of parts between teams. Mechanical innovation is an important aspect of motorsports — especially in a series like Formula 1 — and that innovation has been greatly reduced in Cup.
And with the way the Next Gen car is designed and with the way it races, there’s little variation in what the drivers can do behind the wheel. No matter what varying driving styles drivers used in the Gen 6 and previous generations of Cup cars, they are all pigeonholed into racing the cars the same way, and there isn’t enough practice time for teams to truly do a deep dive with the car each and every weekend.
The way the cars are built is standardized, the way the cars are driven is standardized, and the result is a landscape where more drivers are winning. But that individuality and that uniqueness of racing in the past has taken a step in the wrong direction.
When that individuality is removed from the equation, the product at the track takes a hit.
NASCAR needs those stars, but it also needs to develop rivalries. The us. vs. them mentality and the rivalry between teams is what drives much of the interest in stick-and-ball sports, and Cup is lacking in that department. There are fan favorites and villains, but the animosity between the two parties isn’t as prevalent as it is in other sports.
Ways for NASCAR to develop those rivalries? Championship battles and race wins that often come down to the same sets of drivers.
But when there are 18 winners and the field is as equal as it’s ever been, there aren’t many opportunities to plant the seeds of a budding rivalry or feud.
The current championship format isn’t helping matters either, as what the elimination format fails to accomplish, in contrast to the full season championships and 10-race playoffs of years past, is developing those rivalries where drivers are competing against each other for glory.
Since 2014, the drivers aren’t racing for championships against one another. They’re racing against the championship format itself, and everything keeps getting reset every three races. It’s only in the final race that the drivers truly compete against each other, and when the title comes down to the final race every single year, the excitement fizzles out.
In 2010, the championship was Jimmie Johnson vs. Denny Hamlin. In 2011, it was Tony Stewart vs. Carl Edwards. In 2012, Johnson vs. Brad Keselowski, and in 2013, it was Johnson vs. Matt Kenseth. The drivers in the original playoff format weren’t racing for a certain number of points every week. They were racing for nothing more than to leave their closest competitor in the dust week in and week out.
Go back to the first-ever playoffs in 2004 and it’s the same story. Go to any full-season championship that came down to the wire like 1992 and it’s the same story. Having those rivalries between drivers is important, just as it is for every sports dynasty to have a formidable challenger. But when the drivers are racing against a cut line and not against their peers, those rivalries fade out.
Gordon vs. Earnhardt became the NASCAR rivalry because the start and end of their primes overlapped. And while they were good friends off the track, they represented the yin and yang, the two polar opposites in NASCAR fandom based on the backgrounds from which they came.
The 1990s were the era of Earnhardt and Gordon, with the former passing the torch to the latter. The 2000s were the era of Johnson, but he didn’t have a truly formidable rival to spice things up and keep the championship fights entertaining.
And the 2010s? The first half of the decade belonged to Johnson, but the second half was dominated by two drivers: Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch. And while the two were not friends in their primes (see 2011), there was never a time where they went head-to-head with each other for a championship, even though they were unequivocally the series’ premier drivers from 2015 to 2019.
They never went head-to-head because they were all stuck racing the system, racing the elimination format in hopes of making it to the final race. There was never a year where the two of them — and only the two of them — were mathematically alive for a championship, even though 2018 would’ve provided the perfect opportunity in a full-season format to do so. And in 2018, the year when Busch, Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. mopped the floor with the rest of the competition, the championship went to the distant fourth driver of full-season performance in the Championship 4, Joey Logano.
There hasn’t been a repeat champion in this format, nor has there been one since Johnson’s streak of five in a row. Busch (2015 and 2019) and Logano (2018 and 2022) are the only drivers to win two championships in the elimination format, and there was a four-year gap between their first and second wins.
There hasn’t been a driver to beat in this format, and you can’t develop those rivalries if the drivers aren’t competing against each other. Consistent excellence is also how you develop faces of the sport, and it’s difficult to create a face when the list of elimination format championships looks as if a four-sided die was rolled to determine which of the Championship 4 drivers would go on to win at Phoenix that year.
There is parity, but it’s created through the car at the expense of driving style, driving personality and mechanical innovation. There is parity in championship battles, but it’s created by inserting elements of luck and chance into the battle and by having the drivers race against a system and not each other.
The result is a series that has plenty of drivers and teams that take turns at the championship trophy and the winner’s circle, but in a homogenous manner that strips the series of identity that it desperately needs.
Because when everyone stands out, no one stands out.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf