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What’s happening, Daily Downforce readers and NASCAR fans!? Are you excited for there to be cars back on track? We know we are! Maybe a two-week break in the middle of the season is just a smidge too long. That said, it was a great opportunity for many teams (and drivers) in the NASCAR garage to reset, take a deep breath, and come back to the weekly gride with a renewed perspective.
For many teams in the NASCAR garage, this return is a huge opportunity to readjust and start anew. Today we here at the Daily Downforce want to take a look at some of the 5 most interesting teams to watch as we come out of this Olympic break. Check it out:
In a shocking turn of events, it was announced that Corey LaJoie and Spire Motorsports would be parting ways following the conclusion of the 2024 season. Part of the reason this was so surprising is that, for a while, LaJoie had been viewed as the cornerstone and/or flagship driver for the team. And despite the team’s struggles this year, it’s a little shocking to see them so willing to jump ship especially after the high expectations heading into this season.
Prior to 2024, Corey LaJoie stated on his Stacking Pennies podcast that he had extremely high expectations for the ’24 season. He even said that it would be an overall disappointment if the team didn’t make the playoffs. Now, fast-forward eight or nine months later and LaJoie is currently 28th in points. He has 1 top-5/top-10 on the year, which was 4th place in the season-opening Daytona 500. Outside of that, he’s run mostly in the mid-20s to low-30s and has an average finish of 22.7, which is nowhere near playoff caliber.
An argument can be made that all of Chevy outside Hendrick Motorsports has struggled this year. Based on that, we can debate whether or not Spire was a little too trigger-happy to release LaJoie in the first place, but that’s not the point of this article. The reason I put Corey LaJoie on this list is simply because of what he said after the announcement of his release:
I’m pretty motivated to still be the first one that puts a win banner on the wall at Spire and a trophy in the trophy case on the Cup side there and continue to finish this thing strong [for] the last 14 races
Corey LaJoie still looks to win to close out this now-lame duck of a season with Spire. The team, despite having their struggles, had the time to rest, relax, and regroup during the Olympic break, and there is still a handful of race-winning opportunities for LaJoie to close out the year. He performs really well on drafting-style tracks and we have 3 left: Daytona, Atlanta, and Talladega. Will LaJoie break through on his way out the door? Only time will tell. But it’ll be interesting to see how this team (built around LaJoie) will close out 2024 before moving on with a new driver in 2025.
Of all the drivers listed here, Ross Chastain has performed the best. Though 2024 has largely been seen as an off-year for the Justin Marks and Pitbull-led team amidst Chevy’s struggles, Chastain still has 2 top-5’s and 7 top-10s. He also currently sits 13th in the point standings but 16th on the Playoff grid, only up 7 points over Bubba Wallace.
After the Olympic break, there will be only 4 races left until the Playoffs commence, and though he’s currently in, he could potentially slip out if he doesn’t keep his nose clean. Many teams who have struggled throughout the year (or just underperformed from expectations) saw this Olympic break as something of a refresher. One of the biggest shockers this year is that Ross Chastain is still winless in 2024 at this late date.
While it is possible for Chastain to point his way in, that number 1 team would be able to breathe a lot easier if they could just nab a win somewhere. And there is no doubt in my mind that the curator of the Hail Melon isn’t 100% motivated in doing so.
Of the tracks coming up, there are some pretty decent ones for Chastain. Historically, he runs well at Darlington, for instance, which is the cutoff race this year. He has shown some flashes at both Richmond and Michigan as well. Daytona is a wildcard, obviously, but he could win there too. You never know. I think this number 1 team is more motivated to win than ever before, and that’s why they’re a team to watch following the break.
Oh man, where do I even begin with Kyle Busch and that whole RCR team? To say that this year has been a disappointment is a massive understatement. 22 races in, Kyle Busch has only 2 top-5 finishes and 6 top-10s. Adding to that, he also has 5 DNFs and an average finish of 19.68. Even with last year’s late-season collapse taken into consideration, I don’t think any of us could have predicted this. In 2023, after leaving his home of 15 seasons at JGR, Kyle Busch won 3 races and made the playoffs comfortably. Now, he’s in must-win territory with only 4 races left, and his streak of winning at least 1 race every season of his career is in real jeopardy.
One thing, however, that many KFB fans and general fans of NASCAR know is that a motivated Kyle Busch is a dangerous Kyle Busch. I would argue that for the better half of this season, we haven’t seen a motivated Kyle Busch. What we’ve seen is a very frustrated Kyle Busch on the verge of melting down. Now, though, he’s had a couple of weeks to cool off. That number 8 team had time to refresh and reassess, and they can now come back with a renewed perspective and new goals.
The number 1 goal for them should be to win. At -112 points behind the cutoff, that’s likely the only way Kyle is going to make the postseason. But more than that, they need to focus solely on winning, playoffs or no playoffs, in order to keep KFB’s winning streak alive. Busch has some great opportunities coming up in the coming weeks. He’s always been good at Richmond, but RCR has struggled with the short track package lately. Michigan is similar to Fontana, where Busch won last year, so maybe that’s an option. And Kyle has been good at Darlington in the past.
One race in particular that I think RCR has circled is the summer Daytona race. RCR has historically been great at drafting tracks dating all the way back to Dale Earnhardt, through to Kevin Harvick, and now, Kyle Busch. Busch almost won the Daytona 500 last year and likely would have won if not for that late-race caution. And he won a race at Talladega in 2023 as well. While I think it’s a mistake for them to put all of their eggs in one basket, you can’t deny their strengths at those types of tracks.
It’ll be interesting to see how KFB readjusts following this break. Can he and the number 8 crew break through for a win or will their struggles continue?
Sitting at just a mere 7 points below the cutoff line is Bubba Wallace. Just a few weeks ago, he was in near must-win conversations. But due to consistency on his part and a lot of bad luck on the parts of his competitors, Bubba Wallace is once again knee-deep into this Playoff fight. And, if history is anything to go by, it’s a mistake to count him out.
He was in a similar situation last year. He had an up-and-down start to both the 2023 and 2024 seasons, only to really rally late and squeeze into the NASCAR Playoffs. Will the same happen this year? Only time will tell. But let’s take a look at his season thus far: he has 4 top-5 finishes and 8 top-10s. 2 of his 4 top-5s came at the drafting tracks of Daytona and Atlanta, and he was running well at Talladega as well before getting caught up in an incident. Bubba has historically performed well at drafting tracks, so you know that the summer Daytona race is circled on their calendars.
We also have Richmond coming up, which is a flat short track. Earlier this year, he had a 4th place finish at Martinsville, but he finished 17th at Iowa. So his short track skills are a little unpredictable. Maybe he’ll run well this weekend, maybe he won’t. But he finished 7th at Darlington earlier in the year and that’s going to be the playoff cutoff this year. And he’s historically run well at intermediates like Michigan.
Bubba Wallace is the kind of driver you never count out because, when you do, he forces himself right back into the mix. Let’s see if he can keep up his momentum heading into these last 4 races of the regular season.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been but easily one of the biggest surprises thus far in 2024 has been Todd Gilliland in the number 38 for Front Row Motorsports, especially recently. In recent years, the number 34 team, long-piloted by Michael McDowell, has been the standout team for the organization. They won a Daytona 500 together and, just last year, won at the Indy Road Course to legitimately punch their ticket to the NASCAR Playoffs. Meanwhile, the 38 team has been the second-tier team.
This year, however, it’s clear that Todd Gilliland is now the franchise guy, especially with Michael McDowell’s departure following the 2024 season. The young Gilliland had a slow start to 2024 but really cranked on all his jets in recent weeks. Since Kansas earlier in the year, Gilliland has consistently run inside or just barely outside the top 15. He also has 4 top-10s on the year, all of them coming in the last 13 races. Heck, in 2 of his last 3 races, he finished in the top 10 with a 7th place finish at the Chicago Street Course and a 6th at the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis.
His consistent string of recent finishes has propelled him into the top 20 in points, where he sits 118 back from 16th. I mean, he’s still probably going to have to win to get into the postseason, but the fact that he’s only 6 points behind Kyle Busch is pretty impressive. He’s the 7th highest Ford in points, beating out three of the four Stewart-Haas Drivers.
As far as the races coming up, he finished 13th at Martinsville, which could translate to Richmond, and he finished 12th at Iowa. He also finished in the top 15 for a string of intermediates, which could indicate how he’ll run at Michigan. He finished 8th at Talladega earlier in the year (an indication of their superspeedway speed for Daytona) and 15th at Darlington, respectively. With a 6th place finish at Indy, this team is riding a wave of momentum. It’ll be interesting to see if it can continue following the Olympic break.
That does it for us here, loyal readers. Which teams do you look to take an upward trend in terms of results? What teams do you think might continue to struggle? Let us know your thoughts by commenting on all of our social media pages. And be sure to keep tuning in right here to DailyDownforce.com for our Richmond weekend race coverage and throughout the week for all the latest breaking news in the world of NASCAR!
