Sunday’s (March 16) Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway featured easily the most popular result of 2025, with grassroots racer Josh Berry, the epitome of the blue-collar driver, breaking through for his first NASCAR Cup Series win.
Berry is the first new winner in the Cup Series since Harrison Burton won in the same car last Summer at Daytona International Speedway. Both 2023 and 2024 each saw a lone new winner. With Berry taking his first checkered flag so early in the season, could there be multiple first-timers in 2025?
The simple answer is yes. So, who’s most likely to be next? Here are all Cup drivers with zero career wins, in loose order of their probability of ending that.
Top Contenders
Ryan Preece
Ryan Preece tied a career-best finish on Sunday, finishing third to Berry and Daniel Suarez. He’s a sneaky-good wheelman who has proven success when he’s in a capable car. Preece is a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion.
More importantly, Preece is with a team that has factory support and has won races in 2023 and 2024. RFK Racing co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski is known for choosing his teammates and drivers carefully. He advocated for Joey Logano at Team Penske and handpicked Chris Buescher for RFK.
Preece by the numbers:
Cup starts: 192
Top fives: 5
Top 10s: 17
Poles: 1
Average finish: 22.8
Why he can win: Preece has the raw talent to win. He’s a Modified Tour champion, and while not a national series, it’s gritty and fiercely competitive. He’s a smart racer with good car control in the best Cup equipment of his career with a team that’s invested in his future.
What’s in his way: Preece has never had the equipment to run up front weekly at the Cup level, and contending weekly has to be learned by racing with the leaders. Given competitive equipment in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Preece did just that, but the Cup Series is a whole other learning curve and the weekly frontrunners are fierce.
Ty Gibbs
Ty Gibbs’ had a woeful start to 2025 after struggling hard to end 2024, but there’s no denying how good an organization Joe Gibbs Racing is. Christopher Bell has three wins in five races.
As far as equipment goes, Gibbs has everyone else on this list beat, hands-down. He’s a Xfinity Series champion, and he looked like it was only a matter of time until he won at the top level for much of last year. Gibbs should win races, and there is no reason to think he won’t do that eventually.
Gibbs by the numbers:
Cup starts: 92
Top fives: 12
Top 10s: 23
Poles: 2
Average finish: 19.2
Why he can win: Gibbs has real talent, family name aside. He has won decisively in everything he’s driven and is a Xfinity Series champion. He looked to be on the cusp of Cup wins a year ago, and while he’s in a deep funk at that level, he and his team are capable and have shown that they are.
What’s in his way: The only to snap out of a funk is to do so with a good finish. That can become a vicious cycle very easily when a driver is concentrating so hard on getting out of the slump that he makes mistakes. The more they let frustration mount, the harder it will be.
Longshots in 2025
John Hunter Nemechek
John Hunter Nemechek is a decently experienced driver who has gotten off to a good start in 2025. He’ll need to find consistency before he finds victory lane, but he’s on the right track.
Nemechek by the numbers:
Cup starts: 82
Top fives: 1
Top 10s: 9
Poles: 0
Average finish: 23.5
Why he can win: At 27, Nemechek has experience in good equipment in the NASCAR national series. Knowing how to race for wins is valuable knowledge that can only be gained by running with the leaders near the front of the pack and capitalizing on every mistake and opportunity.
What’s in his way: Legacy Motor Club struggled hard in 2024 and is still a step behind the other Toyota programs. Nemechek is on the right track, finishing in the top 20 in four of five races and just missing in the fifth. If Nemechek is still finishing in the top 20 most weeks come June or July, his chances for a breakthrough improve.
Carson Hocevar
Carson Hocevar is very young, very talented and very aggressive. He’s not making a lot of friends, and he’ll need to work on that if he wants to be a regular contender. He’s also getting the most out of his equipment most of the time. He needs to mature a little, but he’s dangerous.
Hocevar by the numbers:
Cup starts: 50
Top fives: 2
Top 10s: 7
Poles: 0
Average finish: 19.8
Why he can win: Hocevar was racing for a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title in 2023 at just 20. He drives for a team that has shown marked improvement in the last year and commitment to continued growth, and he’s got two veteran teammates, Michael McDowell and Justin Haley, to lean on.
What’s in his way: Spire Motorsports still has a way to go to contend for wins weekly as an organization. The same aggression that allows Hocevar to seize every opportunity on track sometimes gets away from him. Not only does over aggression force mistakes, but it doesn’t make a lot of friends, and at the very least that means no help on track in the form of a well-timed push on a restart or drafting partners.
Todd Gilliland
Todd Gilliland has shown flashes of something more, but he needs to find a top 15-to-20 groove and settle in before being ready for more.
Gilliland by the numbers:
Cup starts: 113
Top fives: 1
Top 10s: 11
Poles: 0
Average finish: 21.5
Why he can win: Gilliland has been good at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, where Front Row Motorsports has won races in the past.
What’s in his way: Gilliland has a decent amount of national series experience in NASCAR, and while he has had some success, he has struggled with consistency. He’s prone to mistakes on track at times. He’s also got the antitrust lawsuit that FRM is engaged in along with 23XI Racing that could too easily cause a distraction.
Noah Gragson
Noah Gragson has speed and bravado to spare. He’s a proven winner at the Xfinity level who let his temper keep him from more. He’s good enough to win, but whether he’s ready is another story.
Gragson by the numbers:
Cup starts: 80
Top fives: 2
Top 10s: 9
Poles: 0
Average finish: 23.0
Why he can win: Gragson milks every ounce of speed from his racecars. He was a legitimate annual title contender in the Xfinity Series. He raced for Truck Series wins as a teenager and finished runner-up in that series in 2018.
What’s in his way: Gragson is a talented driver who needs to learn to better channel his aggression. Learning when to push the envelope and when to back off is a work in progress for Gragson. Also, yes, the lawsuit is a black cloud here too.
Zane Smith
The 2022 Truck Series champion has had a few finishes at the Cup level that suggest he’s capable of being competitive, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty between him and the checkered flag.
Smith by the numbers:
Cup starts: 50
Top fives: 2
Top 10s: 6
Poles: 0
Average finish: 23.5
Why he can win: Zane Smith showed promise last year as a Cup rookie for Spire. His two top fives came at Nashville Superspeedway and Watkins Glen International, not at the equalizing superspeedways.
What’s in his way: Smith has shown promise but needs to finish consistently, at the Cup level, inside the top 20 and top 15 before he looks ready for more. He’s also in the shadow of the lawsuit just like his FRM teammates.
Not This Year
Riley Herbst
Riley Herbst is talented, though he was overshadowed in the Xfinity Series by the likes of Gibbs, Nemechek, and Austin Hill. Still, Herbst was decently consistent and won some races, yet he can be impatient and lacks Cup experience. Expect 2025 to be a learning year for Herbst.
Herbst by the numbers:
Cup starts: 13
Top fives: 0
Top 10s: 2
Poles: 0
Average finish: 24.1
Why he can win: Herbst drives for a winning organization that qualified for the championship race last year. He also won in the Xfinity Series in capable equipment.
What’s in his way: Herbst is the least experienced driver on this list in the Cup Series. Racing with the leaders in Cup is a step above doing it in a lower series. 23XI Racing and Herbst face the same uncertainty as the Front Row contenders on that front.
Ty Dillon
By far the most experienced driver on this list at the Cup level, Ty Dillon’s numbers are still similar to the other non-winners, which means his top-five and top-10 percentages are among the lowest here. At this point, a win would take a lot of luck.
Dillon by the numbers:
Cup starts: 250
Top fives: 2
Top 10s: 7
Poles: 0
Average finish: 21.6
Why he can win: Even a blind pig finds an acorn if he roots long enough. Dillon has had a couple of decent finishes this year, but nothing to show that he’ll break into victory lane without a significant stroke of luck.
What’s in his way: History. Dillon has the same number of top fives and top 10s as Hocevar in five times as many races and comparable equipment. The last time he contended for a national series title, Hocevar was 12 years old. Dillon’s appeal to teams as a driver has more to do with what he can bring in terms of equipment and information than his success as a driver.
Cody Ware
Cody Ware has a hefty number of Cup starts under his belt but is the least experienced here in terms of racing at a national level in lower series. Ware lacks the equipment and backing to get to the point where he’s consistent enough to take the next step.
Ware by the numbers:
Cup starts: 111
Top fives: 1
Top 10s: 2
Poles: 0
Average finish: 29.7
Why he can win: The rest of the field crashes.
What’s in his way: Ware drives for an underfunded, family-owned team without factory support. The limited starts he does have in the Xfinity or Truck Series also came in underfunded equipment; Ware has never had an opportunity to learn how to contend at the top levels of the sport, and that learning curve is incredibly steep.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.