If there was one near-constant throughout a generally unpredictable 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, it was that an edge-of-your-seat battle to the checkered flag could potentially be around every corner.
This isn’t limited to the top-of-mind, three-wide-at-the-line, closest-finish-ever fare, either. Plenty of races over the course of ’24 came down to the wire on all different varieties of tracks, with a dash or two of chaos and controversy mixed in from time to time.
The finish of the Daytona 500 to start the season left many divided on how they felt about a caution ending the race, but one week later, pseudo-superspeedway Atlanta Motor Speedway gave viewers a sight to behold: a three-wide finish, the likes of which really hadn’t been seen since the spring race at Talladega Superspeedway in 2011.
Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2024 here
Rare is it that we see three-wide work out for laps on end at a nontraditional superspeedway, but that’s exactly what happened under the lights in late February: three drivers, all holding their line for nearly half a lap, emulating the Cars photo finish as they looked for their first win of the year.
Daniel Suarez was declared the winner as he nosed out Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney by .003 seconds. This was the first installment of photo finishes in 2024, and three of the sport’s current eight closest margins of victory happened throughout the season.
Motorsports viewers were spoiled this year. Flash forward just over two months later to Kansas Speedway, which has truly delivered in recent years after being just another date on the calendar for some time.
Chris Buescher appeared to have things well in hand, though his mirror was full of Kyle Larson when — surprise — Larson full-sent his No. 5 on the high side entering the final corner. Clean, hard racing ensued as each driver tried to take momentum off the other coming to the flag.
The result? The closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history, at .001 seconds.
It would be a disservice to not mention that both Chase Elliott and Martin Truex Jr. were right on the pair’s heels crossing the line, too. A four-wide finish at Kansas seems damn near unbelievable.
While not a photo finish, Buescher had another shot at a win a week later at Darlington Raceway, but contact from Tyler Reddick with 10 laps to go ended both drivers’ chances at a trophy, while providing another phenomenal set of closing laps, eventually won by Brad Keselowski.
Darlington delivered another nail-biting finish to close out the regular season, when a duel between Busch and Chase Briscoe never seemed settled until the final lap.
A week prior to that instant classic, the series’ only first-time winner of the entire season claimed his maiden — and Wood Brothers Racing’s 100th — triumph on the biggest stage of all at Daytona International Speedway. Harrison Burton and Parker Retzlaff, making up one of the most unassuming tandems in recent memory, blew past Busch on the outside to take the lead and send Burton’s No. 21 to victory lane in a sidewinding duel to the checkered flag.
The aforementioned third insanely close margin of victory this season concluded a frequently four-wide fall race at Talladega, when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. claimed his only win of 2024 over Keselowski by .006 seconds.
Superspeedways and mile-and-a-half tracks didn’t hog all of the fun this year, though.
Let’s take a trip north to the winding esses, bus stops and blue guardrails of Watkins Glen International, where arguably the best finish and battle for the win in 2024 unfolded in mid-September.
In a road-course battle the likes of which viewers hadn’t seen since Marcos Ambrose and Keselowski duked it out at the same track in 2012, an overtime restart gave Buescher a shot at track-style ace Shane van Gisbergen.
Buescher bided his time on the first of the two laps, hammering down through the esses on the white-flag circuit and reaching van Gisbergen’s bumper thanks to a mistake from the driver of the No. 16.
No. 17 moved No. 16 with plenty of contact on both ends, securing the preferred line through the carousel and driving away with the win as van Gisbergen nearly spun off the curbing in turn 6.
That Sunday, the racing gods finally smiled upon Buescher in 2024 after his near-win at Kansas and maybe-would’ve-won at Darlington. Though he didn’t make the playoffs, it was his only win of the year and continued an air of uncertainty with no championship-eligible drivers winning through the first two events of the postseason.
Speaking of playoff eligibility, one driver ensured he wouldn’t race for a championship after a memorable finish at Richmond Raceway.
Austin Dillon had a win in the Commonwealth well in hand until a late caution, and through most of the final two laps of the Cook Out 400 seemed to have lost it to Joey Logano.
That is, until the No. 3 dive-bombed into the final corners, spinning the No. 22. It arrested enough momentum that Denny Hamlin looked to be in prime position to sweep the two 2024 Richmond races, but Dillon then turned hard left to send the No. 11 into the wall.
Though Dillon and company kept the win, NASCAR revoked his playoff eligibility for crashing two cars in the span of several hundred feet.
Finally, another mile-and-a-half capped off the exciting finishes of 2024 with potentially the most clutch final lap of the season.
Reddick, who’d flipped at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the week prior and was facing an uphill battle at Martinsville Speedway the following week, ran third at the white flag at Homestead-Miami Speedway behind Blaney and Hamlin.
Reddick had carved his way back into contention after circumstances set him back late, and he subsequently scooted by his team owner in the first set of corners. The No. 45 then ripped the top going into turns 3 and 4, drawing even with and then blowing by Blaney on the outside to win. Has Michael Jordan been that overjoyed since teammate Bubba Wallace‘s first career win in 2021 or since winning his sixth title with the Bulls?
The Cup Series wasn’t the only division with memorable finishes this year. The second-closest finish of the 2024 NASCAR season at large came in the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ visit to Texas Motor Speedway, where Sam Mayer chased down Ryan Sieg. Amid door slamming and fender rubbing, Mayer’s No. 1 edged out Sieg’s No. 39 by .002 seconds, denying the driver his first win.
Now, were all of these exciting finishes a product of the Next Gen car (in the case of Cup), random chance that all happened to occur in the same season, a great crop of drivers or some mix of all three? It’s probably the latter.
There’s no guarantee that 2025 will bring the same level of parity — 18 different winners in all — that 2024 had, but the highlight reel for the year in our rearview mirror is a long one.
‘Twas a hell of a ride.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.
No mention of how prevalent GWC finishes were this season. Of course you’re going to have a bunch of close finishes if you only have two laps to create any separation between the leaders.