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The 10 Biggest What-Ifs of the 2024 Cup Season

From action-packed finishes to controversial post-race rulings, the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season had a number of razor-thin margins and late-race chaos that had major ripple effects throughout the entirety of the year.

Today, we’ll take a look at 10 of the biggest what-if moments from the season and analyze how that could have changed the entire playoff outlook – and even the season itself.

Before we start, however, there are a few ground rules to play loose and fast with. For starters, after a what-if is covered, forget about it. The whataboutism is fun to an extent, but if you account for every tiny nuance, things can get real confusing, real fast.

Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2024 here

The other rule? We will take a look at how a different scenario might have impacted the drivers directly involved in that moment, but we will assume everything else for the rest of the drivers the rest of the season would have stayed the same.

See also
Stat Sheet: A Statistical Summary of the 2024 Cup Season

1) What if Alex Bowman won the Daytona 500?

The Great American Race started finished with a bit of a whimper. Not only did the race get postponed to Monday afternoon, it also finished under caution. The timing of the caution, however, had a major impact on the bearing of the season.

Alex Bowman had momentum on leader William Byron right as the caution flew. For a moment, it looked like Bowman actually succeeded in taking the lead, but NASCAR ruled Byron was the winner.

This could have made a major difference on the overall season for Bowman, whose name popped up in rumors as the season went on. Had Bowman won the Daytona 500 in February, those rumors likely never would have started to begin with.

But you also have to think of the difference it would have made on Byron’s season. Had NASCAR waited a split-second longer to throw the yellow, Byron would have only had two wins on the season instead of three. He also would have had five less bonus playoff points. 

At Martinsville Speedway in the fall, Byron used every last point to tie Christopher Bell and advance to the Championship 4.

2) What if Martin Truex Jr. won a race?

Two laps. A mile-and-a-half.

That’s all that stood between Martin Truex Jr. and a victory at Richmond Racewayu in the spring. With a half-second lead and two laps at Richmond, a place that typically has lengthy green-flag runs, a late caution messed it all up.

The overtime restart could be a what-if in itself, as it looked a lot like Denny Hamlin jumped the gun. Regardless, Truex came up just short of the win.

A few weeks later at Kansas, Truex trailed Hamlin again, but the No. 19 was gaining quickly, and Truex looked to have another shot at the win. Instead, Kyle Busch spun, and Truex could not steal the win in overtime. 

Truex went winless the rest of the season, and while he did still make the playoffs, momentum and having the safety net of a win can play a big difference. It’s worth wondering how an early-season victory might have helped the No. 19 team get over the hump and maybe win a few more races, or at least give Truex a triumph in his final season.

3) What if the Kansas Speedway finish was reversed?

In that same Kansas race in May, the overtime finish led to an instant classic NASCAR moment as Kyle Larson barely beat Chris Buescher by the smallest margin of victory ever.

There’s quite a few things Buescher could have tried to prevent Larson from pulling alongside, but for the sake of this what-if, let’s assume the top two finishers were revered and Buescher beat Larson to the line.

Buescher did get another shot at the win, as he went on to defeat Shane van Gisbergen in another exciting finish at Watkins Glen International. That race took place in the opening round of the playoffs.

Not only did Buescher’s near-miss eventually keep him out of the playoffs – it also kept him out of the Round of 12. From there, who knows how the No. 17 might have raced differently and if he could have pushed on even further?

4) What if Kyle Larson didn’t miss the Coca-Cola 600?

Now we’re starting to get into some of the heavy-hitters. One of the bigger what-if moments that kept appearing during the season looked back on Larson’s run-in with Mother Nature when he tried to do the Memorial Day double.

What if things were different and Larson did race in NASCAR’s longest scheduled event?

At the end of the regular season, Larson battled Tyler Reddick for the regular-season title. Reddick beat Larson by just one point at Darlington Raceway. Had Larson started at Charlotte Motor Speedway, he would have earned one point at the very worst.

The difference between first and second in the regular season is five points. Larson, the best driver of the 2024 season, missed the Championship 4 cutoff by seven points. 

From there, you can play more games wondering if Larson would have won any stages or how he might have raced differently down the stretch if his gap to the cutline was closer. 

No matter how you frame it, Larson’s absence from the Coke 600 played a large role in the remainder of the season.

5) What if Austin Cindric didn’t spin with two to go at Nashville Superspeedway?

Another season-changing moment took place with two laps left at Nashville. With Hamlin on his way to another win, Austin Cindric went spinning down the backstretch.

This caution eventually set up a chaotic five-overtime finish that put Cindric’s teammate in victory lane – and the playoffs.

It’s impossible that this was all an elaborate plan on Team Penske’s part, and it’s still incredible to think about how much fuel Logano saved. Had the race went green and Hamlin held on, however, that would have meant Logano missed the playoffs just a few months later.

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2024 Top NASCAR Storylines: The Lawsuit

Instead, Logano survived a mess of chaos and held off Zane Smith to earn his playoff spot. We all know what happened from there.

6) What if the summer Richmond race ended in regulation?

With two to go at Richmond in the summer, Austin Dillon had it made. Surely a summer night race with no cautions for incident would finish in a boring, old-fashioned finish, right?

Nope. Ryan Preece and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. would not let that happen. 

While Dillon still won the race, he did it in controversial fashion, to say the least.

What if the race stayed green and Dillon won the race naturally? The answer, of course, is that his win would have counted toward the playoffs. Dillon’s performance after Richmond was less than stellar, and a playoff berth would have likely led to another early exit.

However, we would also still have a very ambiguous idea of how far drivers are willing to go to make the playoffs – and how far NASCAR is willing to let it go. 

7) What if Denny Hamlin didn’t get penalized?

An early-season Bristol Motor Speedway win for Hamlin soured in August when Toyota accidentally disassembled the winning engine prematurely. The ensuing penalty took away 75 points and 10 playoff points for Hamlin.

The 75 points ripped Hamlin away from the regular-season points battle, and he wound up seventh, earning just four playoff points for his efforts through the first 26 races. If you combine that with the extra 10 playoff points that were taken away, it would have made a major difference in the Martinsville battle.

Hamlin entered Martinsville in a difficult situation 18 points below the cutoff. Had the engine penalty not happened, Hamlin would have entered Martinsville just four points out. 

While Hamlin has had plenty of misfortune that ended his championship hopes before, this what-if was out of his control.

8) What if NASCAR didn’t tow the damaged playoff cars at Talladega Superspeedway?

This what-if is interesting because it did not affect the playoff standings much in the end, but it did make a big difference in the finishing order of the race and the potential storylines in the following week.

Following the Big One in the waning laps at Talladega in October, NASCAR made a sudden, in-race reversal of its damaged vehicle policy.

Instead of forcing the stuck cars to retire from the race, NASCAR towed a number of the cars back to pit road after the Big One, even though those cars could not drive themselves back to pit road. 

Drivers like Logano and Cindric climbed from their cars, while guys like Buescher and Noah Gragson got some extra help and kept on racing, passing the cars who did not finish.

Seven cars were eliminated from the crash. Looking at the wad of cars stuck in turn 3 once the red flag waved, there should have been 13 done for the day. When cars DNF, their finish is determined by where they were scored to start the lap. 

While this would have shifted around the finishing order of the crashed cars a bit, the biggest benefactor would have been Logano. Rather than finishing 33rd, a proper following of the DVP would have left Logano in 28th.

These five extra points would have made a huge difference at the Charlotte ROVAL, and Logano would have wound up beating Reddick by one point to transfer to the Round of 8 on his own.

9) What if Alex Bowman wasn’t disqualified at the ROVAL?

As soon as Logano was let back into the Round of 8, you knew he would somehow make it to the championship race. However, what if Bowman didn’t get disqualified? 

Bowman actually would have left Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a favorable position. A top-five finish and some stage points would have tied Bowman and Hamlin together on opposite ends of the cut line.

However, with two new winners at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville, Bowman would have faded from the Championship 4 picture once again.

10) What if there were no manufacturer orders at Martinsville?

The Martinsville muck-up quite obviously affected the Championship 4. But it also might have played a role in the outcome of the championship race.

Had Byron continued to fade and lose the positions he should have, Bell would have easily made the Championship 4. If that happened? Well, everyone knew just how good Bell was at flat tracks and at Phoenix.

Bell won the spring race, and on the final restart, he had a shot at clean air as well. In fact, Bell seemingly raced Byron a little extra hard, which allowed Logano to grab the lead.

But had Bell still been involved in the championship fight, that final battle – and the race overall – likely would have gone much differently. 

Caleb began sports writing in 2023 with The Liberty Champion, where he officially covered his first NASCAR race at Richmond in the spring. While there, Caleb met some of the guys from Frontstretch, and he joined the video editing team after graduating from Liberty University with degrees in Strategic Communications and Sports Journalism. Caleb currently work full-time as a Multi-Media Journalist with LEX 18 News in Lexington, Kentucky and contributes to Frontstretch with writing and video editing. He's also behind-the-scenes or on camera for the Happy Hour Podcast, live every Tuesday night at 7:30!


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ArkyBass

That was fun! Thanks!

DoninAjax

What if NA$CAR made their decisions based on what was best for Brian’s product instead of what made the most $en$e?

Bill B

Good article and good examples for your choices.