In 2024, there are currently three new NASCAR teams joining the National Touring Series full-time. Starting a NASCAR team is difficult to do, but, when they succeed, it makes for a great story. How well do these “New” NASCAR teams usually do?
Stats: 0 Wins; 1 Top-5; 8 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 33rd
Rick Ware Racing joined the Cup Series in 2017, minus a one-off start with Timmy Hill in 2012, and they purchased a charter to run full-time in 2018. Since then, RWR has been a staple of the Cup Series grid, but, they have been more of an afterthought to many for most of their history. The team consistently fielded multiple drivers with multiple manufacturers, and they failed to find any consistent competitive speed.
However, things started to look up in the 2020s. Alliances with Ford, Stewart-Haas Racing, and RFK Racing have given the team some much-needed legitimacy, and signing Justin Haley for the 2024 season shows the team’s desire to get better. Even then, the team is still around, so, that’s more than other teams on this list can say.
Stats: 0 Wins; 0 Top-5s; 0 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 32nd
StarCom Racing started in 2017 with 1990 Daytona 500 winner, Derrike Cope, as the team’s manager. The team secured a charter and ran full-time from 2018 until 2021 with drivers Landon Cassill and Quinn Houff taking on the bulk of the driving duties. The team never recorded a top-10 finish.
StarCom just never got fully off the ground, and, in 2021, they sold their charter. Rumor is that StarCom was concerned NASCAR would revoke their charter if performance did not pick up in 2022, so, the charter was sold to 23XI Racing. This turned into the 45 car.
Stats: 0 Wins; 0 Top-5s; 0 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 31st
Gaunt Brothers Racing ran part-time between 2017 and 2019, but, in 2020, they tried to go big. They signed Daniel Suarez to race full-time for the team despite no charter. The season started by failing to qualify for the Daytona 500.
Suarez limped to a 31st-place points finish that season, and the Gaunt Brothers faded out of the sport after a part-time season in 2021. The lack of a charter likely hurt their prospects, but, their performance was not on par either.
Stats: 1 Win; 5 Top-5s; 10 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 26th
Spire Motorsports was born from the ashes of Furniture Row Racing. The team has gotten better and better every single year. The team won a race thanks to a perfectly timed lightning strike at Daytona in 2019, and they expanded to two cars in 2021 with Corey LaJoie joining the team.
In 2023, the team expanded further by purchasing a third charter for 2024, buying out Kyle Busch Motorsports, and bringing in young drivers Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar for 2024. This team is set to be one of the most interesting teams in NASCAR in 2024, and they are only getting better.
Stats: 5 wins; 28 Top-5s; 48 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 6th
In 2021, Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin founded 23XI Racing. They purchased a charter from the now-defunct Germain Racing, and Bubba Wallace was announced as the driver. The team has slowly improved every year since.
Wallace won a race in 2021, and the team expanded to two cars with Kurt Busch joining the team in 2022. Busch had the team qualify for the Playoffs in 2022, and both cars qualified for the Playoffs in 2023 after Tyler Reddick joined. Now, this team is a true Playoff contender.
Stats: 6 Wins; 36 Top-5s; 64 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 2nd
In 2021, Justin Marks and Pitbull started Trackhouse Racing thanks to leasing a charter from Spire Motorsports. Daniel Suarez joined the team with the 99 car, but the team made a bigger splash by buying out Chip Ganassi Racing. Ross Chastin joined the team, and he made the Championship 4.
The team also made a splash with Project 91, which brought SVG to the United States. This team is all about finding unique ways to get into the sport. The question is, what more is up their sleeve?
Stats: 2 Wins; 13 Top-5s; 30 Top-10s; Best Owner’s Points Finish: 21st
Kaulig Racing moved up to the Cup Series after a solid few seasons in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. A.J. Allmendinger and Justin Haley were the drivers for their first two full-time seasons. The team has two Cup Series wins including one in their part-time season of 2021.
Many were excited to see Kaulig move up to the Cup Series in 2022, but, they have not found the same success. Still, they are an established race team, and they will be interesting to watch.
The success of new Cup Series teams varies from team to team. Five of the seven teams who joined the Cup Series during this time frame are still in the sport, so, the investment has generally worked out in the long term.
Race teams that get the right people in the right places can have success in their early years. Teams like Trackhouse and 23XI made the Playoffs in only their second season. However, teams like Rick Ware Racing and Spire Motorsports are still looking for that first Playoff appearance.
Starting a Cup Series team is a difficult endeavor. However, those who join the Cup Series usually find a way to have some sort of success.
Another race weekend in the books. While Ryan Blaney battled back from several pit road setbacks to win his second straight race at Phoenix, other drivers were much to be desired. It was a big win for Penske but for several others, they leave the first “real” race of the season scratching their head with a lot that they need to figure out. Here are the biggest losers of NASCAR’s Spring 2026 Phoenix race weekend.
I’m afraid that this is starting to be habitual. Another race weekend at RCR for Kyle Busch, another terrible result. Well, the finish wasn’t exactly awful. While 17th is hardly up to Kyle’s standards, it’s about as good as it gets anymore for the two-time champion who hasn’t won a race in nearly a hundred starts.
To start things off, there was a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of that RCR No. 8 Chevy. New crew chief. Personnel changes. A new Chevy body. He even scored the pole for the 68th running of the Daytona 500 last month. But, since then, it has been a sharp slope downward. He was mostly a non-factor in the first three races. And, today, it seemed like the No. 8 Chevy was out to lunch. They unloaded slow. They qualified in the back of the pack. And, before Stage 1 even ended, Kyle was running 34th with no apparent issues and went a lap down to leader Ryan Blaney. To add insult to injury, Kyle Bush had a tire go down on him three times today. More than any other driver. It appears to be back to the drawing board for team No. 8.
You could say that the Hendrick No. 48 team had a rough weekend in general. But I think it would be more accurate to say that the entire start to 2026 has been catastrophic. Heading into today’s race, even with Bowman starting the first three races of the season, the No. 48 team was 36th in points, last among all full-time drivers. Even Cody Ware was ahead of him. If that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.
To rub salt in the wound, their driver missed today at Phoenix due to showing symptoms of vertigo. So, Anthony Alfredo was into sub and…it went about as well as you’d expect. He went a lap down early and never recovered. He got caught up in the incident involving Joey Logano and DNF’d. Officially, they scored a 33rd finishing position. This is the worst start Bowman could ever imagine, considering that he’s in a contract year.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve lost my marbles. “Come on, dude! Penske just swept the weekend! How can they be losers?” Hear me out. Let’s start first with the two other Penske drivers, shall we? Joey Logano caused not one, but two multi-car pileups, one involving his Penske teammate, Austin Cindric. Cars were utterly destroyed. Before that, both Cindric and Logano were running solidly in the top 10.
So, it’s not for a lack of speed that they make our Biggest Losers list. The reason they’re listed here is that a lot of their problems today, if not all of them, were self-inflicted. Logano was driving sloppily and that took out Cindric. And even race winner Ryan Blaney almost lost this race on pit road numerous times. Rookie mistakes by the pit crew constantly had him charging from behind. Pit road penalties. He was like a yo-yo going back and forth throughout the field. What saved him in the end was that, on that last restart, Blaney took two tires and Christopher Bell took 4. If that had not happened, it is extremely possible that Blaney ultimately would have lost the race and it would have been because of their numerous mistakes in the pits.
They got lucky this week. They probably won’t get that lucky again. They need to clean up those nagging, senseless mistakes.
Ole, Danny boy. If Alex Bowman’s seat is the hottest in the series, Daniel Suarez has to be the second hottest in the garage. That No. 7 car has been a revolving door of drivers for the last several years and it looks like Suarez is shaping up to be Spire’s latest victim. It’s the same old story with the team: they show impressive speed in qualifying and even early on in the race. But rarely do they ever put a full race together. That criticism isn’t just for Suarez, it applies to the team across the board.
But Carson Hocevar is the team’s golden child. He’s not going anywhere. And the team seems pretty high on Michael McDowell at the moment. That leaves Suarez looking like the odd man out, a seat-warmer, if you will. He needs to perform. And, he’s done well to start, admittedly. But he qualified 5th for today’s race. He even earned a few stage points in the opening stage. Then, he faltered and left the race with an unceremonious whimper. Ultimately, after he was no longer a factor, he was caught up in a mid-race wreck. He finished 30th. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the Mexican-born driver. If he wants to keep his ride next year, he needs to show stark improvement in the coming weeks. I have a strong feeling that that ride is about to be a highly sought-after commodity once silly season rolls around.
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The first checkered flag of the 2026 rendition of the NASCAR West Coast Swing (as abbreviated as it is) has officially flown. It was an exciting race, full of close, tight-cornered racing, a plethora of tire issues littered throughout, and a couple of heartbreaking, hard hits. Surviving it all was Ryan Blaney, who captured the flag in the Straight Talk 500 at Phoenix Raceway. He survived pit road mishaps and passed a total of 49 cars to win the race today. It marks his 18th career victory, sweeping the weekend for Team Penske. So, for Blaney and Team Penske, the race was the highest of highs. Not everyone escaped unscathed, though. Here are the key takeaways from NASCAR’s spring date at Phoenix.
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Following a relatively clean first stage, Stage number 2 and beyond was littered with cautions. Most of these cautions were a result of tires going down after only about 20 laps or so of use. But the caution on Lao 216 was purely driver error. Joey Logano, who was running 7th at the time, made a move down on the apron approaching the finish line. Chaos ensued. Here’s what happened.
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