In the first 25 years of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series’ existence, only two drivers made the leap from the series straight to the NASCAR Cup Series and truly made it work: Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards.
Busch was a Truck rookie in 2000 at age 21, made Cup starts later that year, went full-time Cup racing in 2001 and won a Cup championship in 2004 before he ever made a start in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, where he won his debut in 2006.
Edwards was a part-time Truck driver in 2002 at age 23, went full-time Truck racing in 2003 and 2004, ran 13 of the final 14 Cup races in 2004 and only made two O’Reilly starts before running concurrent full-time schedules in Cup and O’Reilly for 2005, winning a combined eight races.
What both Busch and Edwards had in common was that they both drove for RFK Racing. But not every driver for RFK went from Trucks to Cup, as Greg Biffle won championships in both Trucks and O’Reilly, while Matt Kenseth never made a Truck start in his entire career. But whatever made Busch and Edwards successful in their jumps wasn’t duplicated, as every other future Cup star that debuted in the late 1990s and the 2000s perfected their craft in O’Reilly. Some drivers did a combination of both, but the prospects in this time typically zeroed in on O’Reilly and skipped the Truck Series entirely more often than not on the way up.
By the start of the 2010s, the path had changed again to where future Cup drivers received extensive experience in both Trucks and O’Reilly on their way up. Whether it was because they stayed in Trucks and O’Reilly hoping for their big break or because they debuted at a younger age and garnered more starts to make up for their lack of experience, the result was the same: more drivers spending more time in NASCAR’s second and third series before jumping to its top division.
Nearly every future Cup winner that debuted full time in the 2010s followed this path. The only three who didn’t were Chris Buescher, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Alex Bowman, who all spent full-time seasons in O’Reilly before moving to Cup, all before they ever touched the Truck Series.
Flashforward to 2022, and the path has begun to shift again, but for reasons no one would’ve predicted at the time: the brand-new Next Gen car. As the teams and drivers got more experience with it, they quickly learned that it required an entirely different driving style from the O’Reilly car.
On last week’s episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Shane van Gisbergen — who spent a full-time season in O’Reilly in 2024 before moving to full time in Cup in 2025 — implied that the O’Reilly car didn’t prepare him well and said that he “almost should have been thrown in the deep end in Cup” in order to learn that car. Immediately after, Connor Zilisch said the cars are “so different” and “polar opposites,” and that he almost has to clear his mind after an O’Reilly race because “everything I learn on Sundays is opposite.”
Coincidentally, 2022 saw the first driver since Edwards to jump from Trucks to Cup, as Todd Gilliland broke the mold and graduated from Front Row Motorsports’ Truck team to its Cup team, all without making a single start in O’Reilly.
And with the trucks having more similarities to the Next Gen car, the Truck-to-Cup pipeline that laid dormant for 18 years was blown wide open once again.
Gilliland was followed by Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith in the 2024 rookie class. Both drivers spent multiple full-time seasons in Trucks while only making a handful of starts in O’Reilly, and Hocevar broke through with his first Cup win at Talladega Superspeedway in April. He became Spire Motorsports’ top Cup driver almost immediately after bursting onto the scene, and he now sits ninth in points with a potential Chase spot on the line. Smith struggled in his first season and hasn’t won a Cup race yet. But he has quickly established himself as the lead driver at FRM, and with the performance he’s shown this season, that first Cup win is looking more and more like a matter of when and not if.
That brings us to Corey Heim, the latest Truck-to-Cup driver who will debut full time in Cup next year. He had already impressed in limited Cup starts, and he pulled off an all-time shocker at Naval Base Coronado on Sunday (June 21) by outdueling Tyler Reddick — his 23XI Racing teammate who leads the series in points and wins this year — in the closing laps to take the win.
Hocevar, Smith and Heim have been the first three Truck-to-Cup drivers after Gilliland, and all of them are shaping up to be the stars of tomorrow.
On the other hand, how have the newest Cup drivers that came up through the O’Reilly Series fared? Ty Gibbs won an O’Reilly championship and has never made a Truck start, and while he scored his first Cup win at Bristol Motor Speedway in April and sits fifth in points, it took him 131 races to win and put all the pieces together while racing for one of the top teams in the series.
Noah Gragson hasn’t made a Truck start since 2018, moved up to Cup in 2023 after four full-time seasons in O’Reilly and has largely struggled since, as he currently sits 29th in points, the lowest of the FRM drivers. Josh Berry hasn’t made a Truck start since 2021 and moved up to Cup in 2024, and while he pulled off an impressive Cup win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last season, he currently sits 30th in Cup points and is out of the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 car at the end of this year.
Zilisch, who made a handful of Truck starts in 2024 and won an astounding 10 O’Reilly races last year as a rookie teenager, is currently mired in the one of the worst rookie seasons in recent memory, sitting second-to-last in points among full-time drivers. And as Zilisch himself said last week, there’s very, very little that driving the O’Reilly car can do in helping him learn the Cup car.
If you’re a driver with aspirations to make it to Cup, it’s looking more and more like the Truck Series is the one to prioritize on the way up the ladder. If you’re a current Cup driver, running a Truck race every now and then doesn’t seem like a bad idea either. And if that’s the case, where does that leave the future of O’Reilly, NASCAR’s second series that now seemingly does little to prepare drivers for its first?
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.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
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