1. The Cup Series Off Week Couldn’t Come at a Better Time
The pace of the NASCAR Cup Series season doesn’t leave much time for self-reflection. As soon as one race weekend finishes, it’s time to pack up the haulers and head for the next venue. This coming weekend, with a break for Easter, is a rare exception.
If anyone needs to look in the mirror during the time off, it’s NASCAR itself, because a series of decisions made by the people in charge has combined to put its top series in a rut.
Those start with the Next Gen car, which was introduced in 2022 with the best of intentions but has certainly paved a bit of a road to hell. Saving money and introducing parity were lofty and noble goals, but the competitive cost has often been too high.
The dreadfully dull Bristol Motor Speedway race we just sat through is all the proof one needs. With the cars all too even and hard to move with a proper bump-and-run, short track racing remains a puzzle the Next Gen car can’t crack except when NASCAR gets creative with tires — something it didn’t do this time out.
Intermediate tracks have been the places where the Next Gen has shined, but that didn’t save Darlington Raceway from becoming a snoozer as well, and it’s not like the parity throughout the field is even showing up at the checkered flag anymore, since three drivers (Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson) have combined to win seven of the nine Cup races in 2025.
If NASCAR was intentionally trying to get fans not to watch, it would be hard-pressed to come up with a formula more effective than the one it’s stumbled into by accident: races run by a field of very equal cars that still remain noncompetitive because it feels like only a handful of drivers can win.
As a result, we’re now left hoping for Talladega Superspeedway to save us … even though we all know people will be complaining about that race for entirely different reason. There’s a lot of season left, but NASCAR would still be well-served to spend the Easter break doing some soul-searching for ways to turn the prevailing trends around.
There’s an obvious place to start …
2. NASCAR Has to Find a Way to Make Passes for the Lead More Viable
Fans want to see drivers be able to challenge for and take the lead if they can catch the leader. Seems obvious for a racing series of any kind, right?
That just flat out isn’t happening. Frontstretch NASCAR content director says we’ve just seen three straight races where one driver has led at least 2/3 of all laps run while there were less than 10 lead changes — the first time that’s been true since 1978.
Smack in the middle of that was Darlington, where if the cautions had fallen correctly there was a very real chance there would have been zero lead changes. I almost wish that would have happened so this would have taken things to the most ridiculous possible extreme.
NASCAR has shown a willingness to tinker with rules midseason in the past, and while those changes were sometimes decried at the time, that spirit is exactly what’s needed now. The Next Gen car means there are fewer levels to pull than in the days where every manufacturer’s body was different, but whether it’s tires, aerodynamics or the h-word that no one in the governing body seems to want to utter (it rhymes with ‘Norse flower’), it would be great to see something done to solve the biggest problem in the sport right now.
Because while parades are sometimes fun, they’re not what race fans want to see on Sundays.
3. Are We Already at Hendrick and JGR vs. the Field?
It would be silly to count out Team Penske, seeing as its drivers have won the last three Cup Series championships. One of them, Ryan Blaney, also looks like one of the few this season who can consistently make his way from the back to the front during any given race.
And yet …
Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have a stranglehold on the Cup Series right now. Combined, they’ve won every race but one, occupy the top five spots in points and would have seven of their eight total drivers in the playoff field if the regular season ended today (and Ty Gibbs is showing signs of coming to life too).
Penske will certainly be heard from at some point. Maybe 23XI Racing too. Everyone else appears to be a step behind at the moment.
4. Maybe Pitbull Got Out at Trackhouse at the Right Time
One of the teams that is at least one step back and maybe more than that is Trackhouse Racing. Though the three-car team has had both highs and lows already in 2025, the latter are piling up much faster than the former.
There always figured to be a learning curve for Shane van Gisbergen in his rookie Cup season, but it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking it would be this steep. The Kiwi road course ace finished a respectable sixth at COTA but has been miserable everywhere else: His best finish on an oval was 20th at Darlington, and he’s come home 31st or worse an astonishing six times in nine starts.
Daniel Suarez impressed everyone with a second-place result at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, hinting that he might be finding his way out of an early season morass where he finished 33rd, 36th and 23rd in the three races following Daytona International Speedway. Not so much; his best effort since then was 15th at Darlington, and he just ended up 33rd at Bristol.
The closest thing to a silver lining has been Ross Chastain, a respectable 11th in points with five top 10s (including the last three straight). On the other hand, since winning the season finale at Phoenix Raceway in 2023, Chastain has been to victory lane just once in 45 races since and hasn’t been a player in any win yet this season.
When your best driver is running fine but mostly invisibly, that’s not great. The header for this section was intended as a joke, but the way Trackhouse has been running can’t be making too many people smile at the team’s shop.
5. Of Course, You Could Always Be Cole Custer
There aren’t many drivers who could look upon SVG’s current spot in the standings with envy. Actually, there are only two: Cody Ware and Cole Custer, the only drivers to have made all nine starts and sit below van Gisbergen in points.
Custer is a nice guy — I have fond memories of my son going to get his autograph while I was in a different line at Dover Motor Speedway years ago — but is bringing the adage about finishing last to life. He wheeled his No. 41 Ford to a 21st-place finish in the Daytona 500 and incredibly hasn’t equaled that result since. Custer has placed in the 30s just twice, but his average finish on the season is 27.8. Ouch.
We’ve become so accustomed to drivers who get a second lease on life in the Cup Series having their fortunes tick up that it almost goes unnoticed when someone has it go even worse the second time around. I’m not sure what I expected from the single-car Haas Factory Team effort, but it sure wasn’t this, and I can’t imagine Custer is finding this to be more fun than competing for wins in the NASCAR Xfinity Series like he was a year ago.
