The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is here. Cars will take to the track this weekend for the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on Feb. 2, and the 67th running of the Daytona 500 is less than three weeks away.
With a wide array of driver and team changes from the offseason alongside more minor personnel tweaks — or even a few lineups that stayed exactly the same — there’s a lot to discuss as the Cup Series moves into the fourth season of the Next Gen era.
For 2025, 19 members of Frontstretch staff voted on a top-30 ranking, taking into account each driver’s 2024 season as well as their outlook for 2025. A first-place vote garnered 30 points for a driver. A second-place vote garnered 29 points, all the way down to a 30th-place vote that netted one point.
Below is where we landed. Check back tomorrow (Jan. 28) for position Nos. 20-11, followed by the top 10 on Jan. 29.
30. Erik Jones
Points: 44
There’s no way around it: 2024 was rock bottom for Erik Jones and the No. 43 team.
Jones only recorded two top-10 finishes in 2024, both of which came at superspeedways. He finished the season with the worst average finish of his career (22.9), and he failed to lead a single lap all year.
To make matters worse, Jones suffered a compression fracture in his lower vertebrae after a vicious crash at Talladega Speedway in April, which sidelined him for the first time since becoming a full-time Cup driver in 2017.
With two missed races and disappointing on-track performance in the ones he ran, the end result was a 28th-place points finish for Jones and an offseason full of questions for a rapidly regressing Legacy Motor Club. The switch to Toyota did not improve performance, and the team is back at square one to start 2025.
Few, if any, of the team’s struggles fall squarely on Jones himself, as he’s been a more than capable driver with the proper equipment. He scored seven top-fives in 2022 and pulled off an upset win in the Southern 500 that same year, so he still has what it takes to contend for wins at this level. But that was three years ago, and with how far LMC has fallen, it will be a long, lengthy process to bring the No. 43 team back to its former glory. –Stephen Stumpf
29. Austin Dillon
Points: 45
Austin Dillon has to be looking forward to the start of a new season after enduring one of the worst in his Cup Series career. I mean, sure, he won a race at Richmond Raceway last August, but thanks to his actions at the end, it didn’t count toward the playoffs. He was also deducted points for intentionally wrecking Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, which really set him back in the standings.
It’s not like it the points penalty mattered anyway in the grand scheme of things, however. Up until that race at Richmond, he had earned just two top 10s in the first 22 races. Most of Dillon’s finishes were in the 30s prior to that.
Dillon did post a couple of top 10s after Richmond, which included a seventh at Martinsville. However, that seventh place was basically moot for him, as he and his team were again hit with severe penalties for playing a role in helping fellow Chevrolet driver William Byron advance to the championship round. He lost 50 driver points and was fined $100K, and his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team was also hit with the same penalty.
Dillon ended up finishing a disappointing 32nd in points, three spots worse than his equally disappointing 2023.
He’ll have a new crew chief this year, as Richard Boswell joins RCR after previously leading Chase Briscoe’s team at Stewart-Haas Racing. Boswell may just be one of the things the team needs to turn things around after a dismal season for Dillon.
As far as what tracks Dillon could be good at this year, watch for him at Richmond for some potential redemption. Also, the pack racing tracks like Daytona and Atlanta could be good as well, as he likes to drive aggressively. If he stays out of trouble and doesn’t make anymore enemies, he could wind up near the front at one of those races. –Joy Tomlinson
28. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Points: 65
It didn’t lead to a playoff berth, but Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s 2024 season was a success thanks to his thrilling photo-finish victory at Talladega in October. It was the fourth win of his Cup career (all on superspeedways), and he’s posted two consecutive seasons with a win after breaking a dry spell dating back to 2017.
Aside from the wins, Stenhouse has typically recorded one to three top fives and a half dozen top 10s per season in the last half decade, and last year was no exception. He didn’t quite reach the heights he and the No. 47 team experienced after winning the Daytona 500 in 2023, but it was still a solid season overall.
The upcoming season marks a year of change for Stenhouse and the newly rechristened Hyak Motorsports, however, and it won’t come without growing pains. Long-time sponsor Kroger departed to RFK Racing, while Jodi and Tad Geschickter (the “JTG” in JTG Daugherty Racing) left the team. Co-owner Gordon Smith emerged as the primary owner of Hyak, and there are multiple questions surrounding the team that won’t be answered until it hits the track.
Will Hyak succeed in filling the sponsorship void left by Kroger? Will the team show the same speed, or will it see a regression in performance? Even if it does, the No. 47 team will still be a force on superspeedways, which remain Stenhouse’s bread and butter. It only takes one win to qualify for the playoffs and turn a season around, and Stenhouse will absolutely have those race circled on the calendar. -Stephen Stumpf
27. Ryan Preece
Points: 94
Ryan Preece partners back up with a familiar sponsor, Kroger, for the first time since 2021 as he makes the move to RFK Racing, one of the better up-and-coming teams in the Cup Series as a third driver. It feels like just what the doctor ordered for Preece heading into his sixth full-time year in the top division of stock car racing.
His ranking of 27th in the power rankings reflects more of his recent two years of struggles during his tenure at Stewart-Haas Racing, as he finished third of his four teammates in points both seasons and ultimately finished 26th overall last season.
No doubt, RFK Racing looks like the best opportunity Preece has had in the Cup Series to date. With that said, driving a third car with a charter leased from Rick Ware Racing will be an interesting twist for both the Berlin, Conn., native and RFK.
Preece’s short track expertise will still play a key factor in the success of his 2025 season. Additionally, he can hold his own when it comes to racing on the superspeedways; Preece is capable of running up front and staying in contention for the win as long as he doesn’t get caught up in the Big One.
The biggest area Preece needs to improve on in 2025 is his performance and consistency at the bigger ovals and road courses. If he takes that leap, this season could be his personal best in Cup.
However, as of right now, Preece would likely need a win to clinch a playoff spot given the competition within his team and throughout the rest of the field. –Wyatt Watson
26. Justin Haley
Points: 100
Statistically, 2024 was the worst season of Justin Haley’s Cup Series career. Zero top fives, three top 10s, and an average finish of 23.4 were all downward trends from his two full-time seasons at Kaulig Racing, but that doesn’t tell the entire story.
Last year, Haley boosted the Rick Ware Racing No. 51 team, an afterthought in the Cup garage, to glimpses of relevance. Haley’s ninth-place finishes at Darlington Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway made him just the second driver in RWR’s history with multiple top-10 finishes in a single season. He also led 25 laps across his 29 races with RWR, which marked the most laps led in a single season by a RWR driver. Now, Haley enters 2025 in arguably the best situation of his Cup career, as he’ll be behind the wheel of the No. 7 Chevrolet for Spire Motorsports — the same team that Haley teamed up with for its only Cup win to date.
Since that moment, Spire has undergone significant change, and it’s now a three-car team that has invested millions of dollars to be competitive on Sundays. Haley will also get the chance to work with Rodney Childers, a 40-time race winner and Cup Series championship-winning crew chief. It also helps that Haley got a seven-race head start with Spire to end 2024 and shined with a seventh-place showing at Talladega.
Haley and the No. 7 team will be a wild card to watch in 2025. If things click early and Spire’s continued growth yields dividends, then Haley could find himself in the playoff bubble conversation or even sneak in with a race win. If the same inconsistency and bad luck that plagued the No. 7 in 2024 strikes again in 2025, then it could be a long year for Haley. –Andrew Stoddard
25. AJ Allmendinger
Points: 105
The 2025 season will mark the fourth year AJ Allmendinger has been promoted to full-time Cup Series racing in his career, and it’s the second time it’s been with Kaulig Racing.
The last time the former open-wheel racer entered a full-time season was the result of a successful NASCAR Xfinity Series effort in 2022 that saw him earn five race victories topped with a fifth-place points finish. This time is not so different, as Allmendinger is fresh off of a third-place Xfinity points result in 2024 — the best of his career — complete with a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
But we saw this movie in 2023, where he earned only one win at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, four top-five results and 21st-place points result. The sequel isn’t likely to be much better.
Allmendinger’s monopoly of road course success has dwindled in recent years. Cup regulars have become more adept at the left and right turns, and more road course ringer rivals such as Shane van Gisbergen are earning faster full-time rides.
To make matters worse, Kaulig’s success has dropped dramatically in the last couple of years. While entering two full-time rides in 2024, the group amassed a combined total of 11 top 10s and a single top five.
As always, the Californian can still rely on the possibility of a road course win to make the playoffs despite going against what will be the fiercest road course competition he has faced, but Kaulig’s midfield speed on oval tracks will almost certainly keep him from breaking into a second playoff round. –Dalton Hopkins
24. Josh Berry
Points: 109
It’s safe to say that Josh Berry’s rookie season did not go to plan, not aided by the fact he was chained to a sinking ship in Stewart-Haas Racing. Filling the shoes of a legend like Kevin Harvick was always going to be a tough fill for a rookie like Berry, but a 27th-place points finish was likely far below even their own expectations. Berry did show promise in late spring and early summer, scoring two top fives and four top 10s in a six-race span. But Berry spent nearly one-third of the season behind the wall, as he led all drivers in DNFs with 10 — no one else had more than seven.
Berry gets a fresh start in 2025, joining the famed Wood Brothers Racing for its 75th season. WBR has also had its struggles in recent years, but it did manage to pull off an upset with Harrison Burton at Daytona to win its 100th Cup race last August — a race that Berry was in contention to win before flipping and scoring one of his 10 DNFs.
While Berry nor WBR should expect to immediately turn their performances around in 2025, perhaps the pairing could find more success with each other than before. Berry is a short-track natural, and of course the superspeedways could see anybody win. Berry proved in his years in the Xfinity Series that he can win, so if WBR is able to get the right support from Team Penske, Berry could be an intriguing driver to watch in 2025. –Anthony Damcott
23. Noah Gragson
Points: 142
Noah Gragson finally has something in NASCAR that he hadn’t had since his Xfinity days at JR Motorsports: stability. Front Row Motorsports is trending up, and the team’s expansion to three cars has made Gragson the beneficiary, where he’ll drive the No. 4 in 2025.
His lone season at SHR also yielded some quietly solid runs. Among his stronger finishes were a sixth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on speed in the spring, a ninth in the Brickyard 400 in July and an 11th in the penultimate race of the year at Martinsville. He showed some promise at an organization that had one foot out the door since the Daytona 500.
Now that he has what seems like a long-term home, this year should be used for him to build a solid foundation. The goal is to stay out of trouble and improve as the year progresses. His 24th-place finish in the 2024 standings is a contributing factor to him being ranked similarly before this year begins, but the expectations are certainly lower now than they were one year ago. A playoff berth under any circumstances would come as a surprise, but not an impossibility if he can snag a win somewhere. It will be hard for him to disappoint, but easy for him to shock a lot of people. –Kevin Nix
22. Michael McDowell
Points: 157
After seven years of racing for Bob Jenkins and FRM, Michael McDowell will call Spire Motorsports his new home, bringing crew chief Travis Peterson over with him from FRM for their third straight season together.
The 40-year-old from Phoenix, Ariz., has two career wins: one in the 2021 Daytona 500 and the other at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in 2023. In his 2024 season with FRM, he broke out to not only win his first career pole, but also the most poles in the Cup Series with six; five of them came at superspeedways with Ford power under the hood.
McDowell has proven himself to be a formattable driver on superspeedways, coming close to winning in the spring Talladega race before triggering a last lap Big One in the tri-oval. McDowell led a career-high 256 laps on the season, breaking his former career high of 97 set in 2023.
Despite moving to Chevrolet, McDowell and Peterson could potentially bring notes from FRM to improve qualifying speeds for Spire at the superspeedways. Additionally, Spire is a team noticeably on the rise and could use the knowledge from a veteran like McDowell to return to victory lane for the first time since 2019.
McDowell, driving the No. 71 previously piloted by Zane Smith, will be paired with sophomore driver Carson Hocevar in the No. 77 alongside Justin Haley in the No. 7, a returning talent for Spire.
With Spire’s Hendrick Motorsports alliance and McDowell’s experience on road courses and superspeedways, McDowell looks poised to not only get back into the playoffs but also get Spire back to victory lane. –Watson
21. Todd Gilliland
Points: 179
Entering his fourth season with FRM, Todd Gilliland suddenly finds himself as the veteran at Front Row Motorsports in its flagship No. 34 Ford. His inheritance with the role? Leading a trio of drivers who make up the youngest multi-driver team in the NASCAR Cup Series, as Gilliland, at 24 years old, is joined by newcomers Zane Smith (25), and Gragson (26).
Despite that youth, Gilliland’s 2024 season proved that he is maturing beyond his years, and his presence at FRM will prove valuable to lead a team poised to reach the top echelon of the Cup Series. The Sherrills Ford, N.C., native matched his career-high top 10 total (four), accumulated a career-high of 130 laps led and finished last season with an average finish of 22.1 — more than three positions higher than his previous best of 25.8.
He immediately proved to be a superspeedway threat by leading 74 laps between the season-opening Daytona 500 and Atlanta Motor Speedway in February. Consistency was the epitome of Gilliland’s spring and summer, as he recorded nine consecutive finishes of 17th better from Kansas Speedway in May through the Chicago Street Race in July.
The latter half of 2024 fissured the cracks that Gilliland is still honing in, magnified by going the final 14 races without a top-15 finish. Turning his top 20s into top 15s and 10s while being more of a presence up front are key factors for Gilliland to lead FRM to its fourth playoff berth.
A new number, sponsor and role also bring a new, championship-pedigreed crew chief in the form of Chris Lawson. The duo previously worked together in the ARCA Menards Series West, winning consecutive titles in 2016 and 2017, and Lawson won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title in 2022 with Smith. That familiarity should prove vital for the No. 34 team as it looks to be in the playoff mix once again.
You can argue that positions 10-35 could be interchangeable in 2025, with the Cup field standing as one of the most competitive in history. But with his growth, the trust FRM has invested into him, and as someone who hovered around the top 20 most of last season, Gilliland makes a good argument to be a “surprise” winner and join the playoff field for the first time. –Luken Glover
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.
Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.
Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised watching motorsports and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.
Wyatt Watson has followed NASCAR closely since 2007. He joined Frontstretchas a journalist in February 2023 after serving in the United States Navy for five years as an Electronic Technician Navigation working on submarines. Wyatt writes breaking NASCAR news and contributes to columns such as Friday Faceoff and 2-Headed Monster. Wyatt also contributes to Frontstretch's social media and serves as an at-track reporter, collecting exclusive content for Frontstretch.
Wyatt Watson can be found on Twitter @WyattGametime
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter, among many other duties he takes on for the site. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loudcolumn, co-host of the Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
Kevin Nix has been with Frontstretch since February 2023. Hailing from Gilbert, Arizona, his dream is to be in the NASCAR media sphere full-time. He is a video assistant, working on the back end to streamline video and audio quality of all at-track interviews. Nix also writes about news every Monday for the site.
Nix graduated with a Master's Degree in Sports Journalism from ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, Arizona. He also has bachelor's degrees in Communications and Political Science. In his downtime, he likes to read, play video games and take walks in the Arizona weather - when it's not too hot.
Luken Glover joined the Frontstretch team in 2020 as a contributor, furthering a love for racing that traces back to his earliest memories. Glover inherited his passion for racing from his grandfather, who used to help former NASCAR team owner Junie Donlavey in his Richmond, Va. garage. A 2023 graduate from the University of the Cumberlands, Glover is the author of "The Underdog House," contributes to commentary pieces, and does occasional at-track reporting. Additionally, Glover enjoys working in ministry, coaching basketball, playing sports, and karting.