One surprising fact that I never quite put together until well into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is that every team that acquired a charter from Stewart-Haas Racing was a two-car organization last season.
The three teams — Front Row Motorsports, 23XI Racing and Trackhouse Racing — all added a third entry to their stables for 2025 thanks to SHR’s rebranding to Haas Factory Team that saw the team downsize from four cars to one.
A fourth team, RFK Racing, also expanded to three cars this season, but its newest charter is via a lease with Rick Ware Racing — which could turn into an ugly situation due to the lawsuit between RWR and Legacy Motor Club, another two-car team looking to expand to a third in 2026.
However, if Legacy truly wants to expand to three full-time teams next season, it should take notes from each of the four teams who expanded this season, because each team has a third car noticeably lacking in performance compared to the other two.
Whether it’s the product of being used to having two full-time cars or just general downturn in performance, it’s wild that each team is having a down season with one entry.
And generally, it’s the newest car that was added into the fold.
FRM entered 2025 in good hands with Todd Gilliland returning, albeit moving to the team’s flagship No. 34 car after Michael McDowell’s departure. The team re-signed Zane Smith back from Trackhouse to drive Gilliland’s old No. 38 after McDowell took Smith’s old No. 71 ride at Spire. So far, the move has worked, as Smith has found his confidence again and is currently on a five-race streak as the top-finishing FRM driver.
Amid FRM and 23XI’s lawsuit, the team acquired a third charter and signed ex-SHR driver Noah Gragson as its driver of the new No. 4 team. With both Gragson and FRM seeing relative success in performance (given the equipment both parties had, at least) in 2024, the pairing seemed to be a good one.
But just eight races in, Gragson only has one top 10 (eighth at Circuit of the Americas) and just two more finishes inside the top 20. After that, each of his other five races have resulted in finishes outside the top 25. He sits a dismal 32nd in points with just 108 points in eight races — an average of just 13.5 points per race in a point system where you can max out at 60 each race (70 if it’s the Coca-Cola 600). While some finishes have been out of his control due to things like crashes, it’s still a largely underwhelming start to the Gragson/FRM era.
Now top 10s aren’t everything: Smith only has one top 10, and Gilliland two. But both drivers have considerably more top-20 finishes and both drivers have a combined one finish outside the top 30 (Gragson has two). But FRM hasn’t run a third full-time car since 2019, so the growing pains are real for both FRM and Gragson. It’s just not at the expense of his teammates, who are generally running par for the course right now.
The same can’t really be said for Trackhouse, which used its newly acquired charter to bring former Repco Supercars Championship driver Shane van Gisbergen up to the Cup Series full-time after a full-time NASCAR Xfinity Series campaign with Kaulig Racing last season.
Let’s state the obvious: I don’t think really anybody expected van Gisbergen to be a true contender for wins outside the road courses. But it’s still been an awful start to the year for the New Zealander. Like Gragson, van Gisbergen only has one top 10, and it also came at COTA. But he has just one other top-20 finish, barely finishing 20th at Darlington Raceway. All but one of his other finishes have been outside the top 30, and that’s saying something given that (again, like Gragson) he only has two DNFs on the season.
If you thought Gragson’s point total was staggeringly low, you might fall out of your chair upon hearing van Gisbergen’s point total: 97. That’s an average of 12.125 points per race. If you take away his stage points, he has only accumulated 83 points on finishes alone.
Yikes.
In van Gisbergen’s defense, Trackhouse as a team has struggled mightily. Daniel Suarez (a subject to yearly rumors of whether or not he’ll be with the team the following season) sits a mediocre 24th in points with only one top-12 finish of second at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, while Ross Chastain, despite having one top five and three additional top 10s, is only 12th in points.
At Homestead-Miami Speedway, Chastain and van Gisbergen finished 31st and 32nd on pure pace. That’s not ideal for a team that just lost a huge investor in Pitbull at the beginning of the season
While the whole team is looking for a rebound, it’s been nothing short of a terrible season so far for the rookie in the No. 88.
Speaking of terrible and rookies, would it shock you to learn that van Gisbergen not only has competition for Rookie of the Year, but is also actually leading the rookie standings? That’s because Riley Herbst (of the Terrible Herbst family, hence the earlier reference) is not living up to the performance of his 23XI teammates in his new ride.
While Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick are top 10 in points and contending for wins, the newest addition to the team hasn’t even sniffed his teammates’ tailpipes. Herbst doesn’t have a single top 15 and sits 34th in points, third-to-last of full-time Cup drivers. He leads only Cole Custer (whatever is going on with Haas’ Cup program is a column for another time) and RWR’s Cody Ware in points among full-timers.
To make things worse, Herbst only has a single DNF in the first race; his 92 points (11.5 point average) have come mostly on pace alone. He did make minor headlines at the beginning of the season by finishing 17th in the first three races of the season, but aside from that has been largely forgotten by even the broadcasters on FOX.
"It's good to see both your cars running good"
— Eric Estepp (@EricEstepp17) April 6, 2025
Even the broadcast booth has forgotten about the 35 car. pic.twitter.com/4vN8sTQan7
With Legacy exploring a third car for 2026, one has to wonder if Herbst is only keeping the seat warm for Corey Heim and will move over to Legacy in 2026. But it’s clear that there is a huge problem within the No. 35 camp, and it might start with the driver. He was largely unimpressive in his time in SHR’s Xfinity program (though the wins he snagged were quite the opposite), and it seems more like funding is what’s keeping him in the car right now.
If he doesn’t pick up the pace as the season progresses, it might be a one-and-done year for the Las Vegas native.
Finally, there’s the oddball that is RFK. RFK breaks the mold a little bit in that its expansion car, the No. 60 of Ryan Preece, isn’t the problem child of the bunch. In fact, Preece seems to be the breakout star of 2025, earning three straight top 10s and on pace for a fourth at Darlington until strategy shuffled him to the rear of the field.
No, the problem lies in the boss man’s car. What on earth is going on with Brad Keselowski?
Of the four drivers mentioned in this article, Keselowski is the best of the bunch in points, but that’s not saying much; all four are 31st-34th in points. Keselowski has yet to crack the top 10 this season, with a best finish of 11th at Vegas. The only reason he leads the four in points is because he’s been able to use strategy to gain stage points. Take those away, and Keselowski would be lower than Herbst (and Herbst hasn’t earned a single stage point this season).
Even more surprising is the fact that his teammates are far outdoing him in the points — Chris Buescher sits 11th and Preece sits 13th, both in a position to point their way into the playoffs. But Keselowski is sitting outside the top 30 with just 111 points, an average of 13.875 points per race.
Some of Keselowski’s finishes have been out of his control, such as his loose wheel at Darlington that caused him to spin and put him behind the rest of the day. However, one has to wonder if age is beginning to show for the Michiganian. Sure, he’s not as old as drivers such as Denny Hamlin, but he is still 41. He’s turned RFK around without question, just not as much as I’m sure he and his fans were hoping. He’s only won one race since joining RFK in 2022 (Darlington’s spring race last season) and can’t buy a good finish if he wanted to.
Maybe it’s time to move fully into team ownership? Who am I to say? For all I know, he could go off and win a ton of races this year and throw that notion out the window. But the No. 6 team is in disarray, which is surprising considering the No. 60 came together over the offseason and seems to have hit the ground running with Preece.
So, yes, Legacy wants a third full-time car for 2026, but is it the best idea? Because it hasn’t really worked out well so far for everyone else who expanded from two to three this year.
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.