NASCAR on TV this week
#5: Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports, HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, #48: Alex Bowman, Hendrick Motorsports, Ally Chevrolet
(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

4 Burning Questions: Are the Start and End of the Seasons Too Repetitive?

by

Should playoff tracks be more scattered throughout the regular season?

Through the majority of the early races this season, a large storyline is the fact that these first couple of races have taken place at tracks that will be important at the tail-end of the season.

Most of these tracks and races have almost felt too familiar. That’s because nine of the first 10 races have occurred at tracks featured in the final 12 races of the 2024 schedule. The stretch of race the last month, from Phoenix Raceway to Martinsville Speedway, repeats the same four tracks that ended the previous year.

There are reasons for these tracks lining up the way they do on the schedule, but NASCAR should make sure the beginning and end of the season do not mirror each other too much to prevent fatigue from setting in too early in the year.

The main reason the start of this season is especially tiring is because we’ve returned to tracks that caused a lot of controversy at the end of 2024, only to have more controversy in 2025. 

At Daytona International Speedway last year, the win-and-you’re-in system came under scrutiny when Harrison Burton won, and adding Atlanta Motor Speedway as a second drafting-style racetrack in the playoffs was a questionable choice. Those two races provided last-lap caution controversies in the first two weeks this year.

Joey Logano posting the worst average finish after winning a championship at Phoenix was unpopular, and Phoenix contributed to further tire debates with the option compound this year.

Of course, Martinsville had some major controversies with manufacturers playing games to decide the Championship 4. While the NASCAR Cup Series race stayed tame this spring, the NASCAR Xfinity Series became the focal point after a messy finish.

Of course, the reason these races seem to exclusively take place in the spring and fall is because racing in the South in the cooler seasons keeps races from being too cold, while these tracks could get dangerously hot in the summer.

Additionally, the races happening so early in the season leave a lot of time for teams to learn and grow, allowing new players to arise in the Playoffs. 

However, moving one or two of these races closer to the summer stretch could be a good thing to allow for more schedule diversity to start the season. It can also provide a balance between some of the crazier new events NASCAR has added to the summer, like racing in Mexico and Chicago.

The schedule used to have two races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Michigan International Speedway and Pocono Raceway squeezed into the summer, often just a few weeks apart. What’s the harm in moving the first of two races at a playoff track to the summer? After all, summer weather could still be different enough from temperatures in the late fall months.

Not every race needs to move to the summer, but sliding Martinsville or Kansas Speedway to a Saturday night in May or June could keep the start and finishes of the season from becoming too repetitive.

Which series did Throwback Weekend the best?

When throwback weekend rolls around, some teams and drivers do their best to match retro schemes from motorsport history. 

These days, teams don’t try as hard to stay consistent with a theme or era, and some teams flat-out skip the festivities. While some drivers and fans feel like throwback weekend may have run its course, there is still a super fun and unique element to see the garage collectively donning a different look to honor drivers and teams from the past.

That being said, there are some terrific looks at the track, but one series outperformed the other when it comes to celebrating the weekend.

Altogether, the Xfinity Series had at least 25 throwback looks to battle it out in the race, whereas the Cup Series only had 19. 

Some Cup teams brought out some awesome designs like Kyle Larson throwing back to Terry Labonte’s No. 5 or Josh Berry’s green and yellow No. 21. Team Penske, which has skipped throwbacks for some drivers in the past, pulled out all of the stops for its three Fords as well.

But the best looks could be found in the Xfinity Series.

The RSS Racing duo had some vintage looks honoring two great Robert Yates cars from 1999 and 2002. The Burton cousins also did a great job honoring their fathers’ racing careers.

A couple of Jamie McMurray looks for Carson Kvapil and Dean Thompson took me back to my childhood, and I also enjoyed Haas Factory Team incorporating grass onto the hood of Sam Mayer’s No. 41 Ford when replicating Kurt Busch’s victorious Daytona 500 look.

You also had to expect the No. 8 to sport a great scheme with the iconic font back on the car this season.

The best look at the track this weekend has to be Brennan Poole’s No. 44 CW & Sons throwback to Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 Chromalusion Looney Toons scheme from 2001. 

While Alpha Prime Racing didn’t have Bugs Bunny on the hood, it instead placed a cartoon version of Poole on the hood to sell the whole look, capping off an incredible run of schemes for the field.

See also
Drivers Suggest It's Time to Throw Away Throwback Weekend

How do the Hendrick cars stack up against each other?

The common social media phrase to discuss who maybe shouldn’t deserve their ride begins with “Let’s start a conversation.”

When it comes to Hendrick Motorsports, however, no conversation needs to be had.

For context, rumors have the last season or two about the next great Hendrick Motorsports prospects. Who is Rick Hendrick looking at? Who would a new driver replace?

With that speculation, eyes turn to the performance of the four current drivers. Both Kyle Larson and William Byron seem safe, based on having multi-win seasons the last three years, and there’s no way the team would let Chase Elliott, NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver, go.

Unfortunately for Alex Bowman, he becomes the default guy with the hottest seat. Sure, Bowman only has two wins in the Next Gen era, the fewest in the Hendrick bunch. The driver of the No. 48 had the ninth-best average finish in the Cup Series in 2024, though, and he’s tied for fifth best so far this season.

In the Saturday media bullpen, Bowman was asked, “Does it ever get exhausting having to defend yourself and defend your effort in order to retain your position in the No. 48?”

“Welcome to media bullpen,” Bowman quipped in response, adding, “I think we’ve been doing all the right things.”

Instead of trying to decipher who’s on the verge of being out of a ride, it’s about time to accept that HMS currently has four really good drivers who can carry the team, at least through the next couple of years.

Going back to average finish, a Hendrick driver has led the series each season since the Next Gen car started racing in 2022. 

All four Hendrick drivers are in the top five in points, with Christopher Bell the extra addition in fourth. 

Wins matter more than ever in this era of NASCAR racing, and it was huge for both Elliott and Bowman to end their winless streaks in the 2024 season. 

The 2025 season is still very young. While Byron and Larson have already won, all signs point to all four drivers being the right guys to go out and represent Hendrick by competing at the front of the field.

Can Brandon Jones win a championship with Joe Gibbs Racing?

With a win at Darlington Raceway on Saturday (April 5) afternoon, Brandon Jones ended a 98-race winless streak. That last win also came with JGR at Kansas in 2022.

Since then, Jones took a detour to JR Motorsports for two years. It’s hard to argue that the move was an upgrade and seemed like a lateral one at best. For whatever reason, Jones had a streak of bad luck with the No. 9 team, and he had the opportunity to return to JGR this year.

Now that he’s back with JGR, Jones could be one of those guys, like Justin Allgaier, who is a perennial threat for the Xfinity Series championship, and he could do it as soon as this season.

Jones has six career wins, and if you think back to the end of his previous stint with JGR, he could have had another. 

Jones had a prime position to win the fall Martinsville race then, a win that would have locked him into the Championship 4 at Phoenix. Instead, his teammate Ty Gibbs spun Jones out on the final lap, snatching the win away.

See also
Xfinity Breakdown: Brandon Jones Throws Back to 2020, Winning at Darlington

That moment in that season seemed like a large reason why Jones left to race with JRM, but the driver did not look as confident. Now, Jones has returned to a team he was very comfortable with, and he’s picked up a win early into this year, burying those poor seasons in the past.

The No. 20 JGR car is fast every year, winning a bunch of races the last two seasons with Aric Almirola and John Hunter Nemechek, and in a series where Daniel Hemric won the championship a few weeks ago, anything could happen. Don’t forget that Jones is very good at Phoenix as well.

Keep your eyes on a confident Jones with a confident team. They could win multiple races – even a championship – by the time this season is over.

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!