Did You Notice? … The NASCAR Cup Series now has 18 winners in 31 races?
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. joined the party on Sunday (Oct. 6), beating Brad Keselowski to the line at Talladega Superspeedway by about the width of his front bumper.
The official margin of victory was just 0.006 seconds, the fourth race decided by less than of a tenth of a second in NASCAR this year (easily a modern-era record).
Stenhouse and his single-car JTG Daugherty Racing team won their first race since the 2023 Daytona 500, helping erase the sting of a season-long slump. He’s also the latest underdog in a surprising postseason trend: three of the five playoff races have been won by those who didn’t crack the 16-driver playoff field.
Suddenly, the Next Gen is showing signs of parity we haven’t seen since the middle of its first year in 2022. When you include the last two races of the regular season, we’ve seen five new winners in the last seven races, several of whom were serious longshots.
Last 7 Cup Race Winners
It’s given the postseason a weird feel. Right now, Hendrick Motorsports is in position to sweep half of the spots inside the Round of 8 even though it’s won just once (Larson at Bristol). Joe Gibbs Racing is in position to get Denny Hamlin into the next round even though Hamlin has led just one lap the entire playoffs.
Regular-season champion Tyler Reddick sits on the bubble for 23XI Racing, only 14 points to the good with a total of zero top-five postseason finishes. He could technically advance Sunday, Oct. 13, with a fifth straight result of 20th or worse.
In the meantime, multiple drivers who slept through the regular season have suddenly woken up and started throwing punches. None of the top five at Watkins Glen were postseason eligible. Zane Smith, a rookie who finished fifth, doesn’t even have a full-time ride secured for 2025. Let’s salute some part-time performances, too: Shane van Gisbergen, not Larson nor Chase Elliott, was giving Buescher everything he can handle down the stretch in that Glen race.
It doesn’t feel like this group is done either. Five races remain for this Cup season to break a modern-era record with 20 winners (the current mark, 19, was first set in 2001).
Two could easily come from the list below.
AJ Allmendinger. The most obvious choice considering ‘Dinger is the defending champion of this weekend’s race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL. He’s going…
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