Welcome to the only off weekend all season for the NASCAR Cup Series.
When you count the All-Star Race next month, NASCAR’s top level races 37 times in 38 weeks from the Daytona 500 to the championship race at Phoenix in November. And with no race on Easter Sunday, Cup Series teams will be competing in 28 races over the next 28 weeks.
Yes, you read that correctly. There will be a Cup Series race every weekend for nearly the next seven months. That’s a grueling stretch.
With nine races in the books and the official season 25% of the way over, the off weekend is a good time to take stock of what’s happened so far. Here are our takeaways from the first nine points races of the season.
Who is the best driver so far?
William Byron is the points leader and lucked into a second Daytona 500 win to start the season. But there’s a credible case that Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson are all having better seasons.
Hamlin, Bell and Larson each have multiple wins this season. Bell won the second, third and fourth races of the season after Byron’s Daytona 500 win, and Larson got his second win of the season in dominating fashion at Bristol on Sunday. Hamlin, meanwhile, entered Bristol looking for a third straight win himself after stealing a win at Darlington the week before following his Martinsville victory.
Each of those three drivers have as many top 10s as Byron does (six) and have one more top-five finish (five). Byron has the best average finish of anyone in the Cup Series so far, but Bell’s excellence and his three wins give him the edge over everyone else so far.
Josh Berry has been an immediate upgrade
The improvement in the No. 21 car has been significant. Berry replaced Harrison Burton at Wood Brothers Racing after the 2024 season and won in his fifth start at Las Vegas to clinch a second straight playoff berth for the team. And unlike Burton’s win at Daytona a season ago, Berry’s victory for the playoffs can’t be considered a fluke.
Berry is only 17th in the standings so far thanks to some really bad luck. He got crashed out of the Daytona 500 and at Atlanta and had one of the fastest cars on track at Martinsville … when the battery was working. Berry has already been taken out of three races this season because of crashes and has dealt with the battery issue. But when his car makes it to the end of the race he has three top-12 finishes. He could be a sleeper candidate to get to the third round of the playoffs.
Brad Keselowski is living a nightmare
It’s been a miserable start to the season for Brad Keselowski. Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing expanded to three cars with Ryan Preece in 2025 and added Kroger as a key sponsor to finance the team’s operations. Chris Buescher is his consistent self and 12th in the standings. Preece is 14th in the standings and having the best season of his career.
Keselowski, meanwhile, is mired in 31st in the standings. He’s ahead of just five other full-time drivers in the standings and hasn’t scored a top-10 finish. Keselowski has crashed out of two races so far this season, but also has just two finishes inside the top 15. The speed just simply isn’t there so far and he was two laps down at Bristol.
Kyle Busch is scraping things together
It’s hard to tell how much things have improved at Richard Childress Racing after its hellish 2024. Busch was 20th in the standings — his worst finish since he was a rookie in 2005 — and Austin Dillon was 32nd with just five top-10 finishes all season.
This year, Dillon is 26th in the standings but Busch is in 15th with four top 10s. He had 10 all of last season. After three of those top 10s came in the first four races of the year, Busch has tailed off a bit from that and is consistently running in the teens recently. But that’s better than last year. And the results so far are enough of a glimmer to think that Busch could get a win later this year or at least point his way into the playoffs.
Are things pointing up for Ty Gibbs?
After a 25th-place finish at Homestead, Ty Gibbs was 34th in the points standings and in the midst of a 10-race run dating back to late 2024 that included just one finish inside the top 20 and seven of 30th or worse.
Over the last three races, Gibbs has finished 13th at Martinsville, ninth at Darlington and then was third at Bristol.
Is it a sign of things to come? Possibly; though Bristol and Darlington have been two of Gibbs’ best tracks. He’s finished in the top five twice at Bristol and scored a career-best second at Darlington in 2024.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LH3JSJEF3VBLRJLJQESEAG34AM.png)
