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The 2024 NASCAR season is almost in the books, and, boy, it has been quite a year! Yes, we’ve had more than our fair share of controversies as well as historically close finishes. As the 2024 season shaped up, there were some surprising names left out of the playoff conversation. To add to that, there were some surprising names who made the NASCAR Playoffs but didn’t quite perform well enough to advance to the final four. Here is why your favorite driver missed out on the Championship 4 race at Phoenix.
There were a lot of eyes on Kyle Busch heading into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. In early 2023, he made a statement. Many fans were calling his departure from JGR for the floundering RCR a mistake. But Busch shut those critics up in a hurry with a series of wins, including the last race run at Auto Club Speedway. But, as 2023 went on, Busch’s momentum crumbled. He had a mid-season collapse like we haven’t really seen in the modern era, and that continued into 2024. Busch had an abysmal year in 2024. He’s only gotten 5 top-5s and 10 top-10s all season long, and his average finish position is 18.2.
For much of the year, he found himself on the outside of the top 20 in points, and he has been an afterthought all year long. The only major storyline for Busch this year was whether or not he would keep up his streak of 19 straight seasons with at least 1 victory. At the time of this writing, it doesn’t look like he’s going to get there.
Let’s talk about the Melon Man himself! Overall, it has been a pretty decent season for Ross Chastain in 2024. He’s been somewhat underwhelming, sure (compared to our expectations of Trackhouse Racing), but he’s consistently run better than his teammate Daniel Suarez, who made the 2024 Playoffs. So, what went wrong? Simply, he didn’t win. Well, he didn’t win when it counted, which is in the regular season. Prior to the start of the NASCAR Playoffs, he didn’t even have a single runner-up finish. That’s somewhat surprising, considering how he and the team caught fire in 2022 by making the Championship 4.
It has been a quiet year for Team Trackhouse, with Chastain earning one win (Kansas in the fall) but only six top-5s and 14 top-10s. His average finish is 14.8. He was solidly in the top 16 in points for much of the 2024 season, but a couple of surprise winners left him on the outside looking in. Simply put, he just wasn’t good enough to win in the regular season, and that was his ultimate undoing.
Similarly to Chastain, Bubba Wallace was just not good enough to win when it mattered most. Unlike Chastain, Bubba Wallace hasn’t won at all this season (yet…we still have 1 race to go). All in all, he’s been fairly consistent this year, showing flashes at times. His average finish on the year was 15.5, which is somewhat on par with his previous seasons. And like those seasons, it’s not really good enough to make the playoffs when you have the constant variable of anyone can win and make it in. He was in the top 16 in points, but with Burton’s win, he was left on the outside looking in.
For all this point format’s flaws, it does prioritize winning, maybe to a fault. But Bubba couldn’t get the job done in the regular season or the post-season, which is a big reason why he didn’t qualify for the NASCAR Playoffs.
2024 may be seen as a down year for RFK Racing, considering their multi-win season last year with Chris Buescher. But 2024 will always be remembered by the organization for the year that the boss man, Brad Keselowski, got his first NASCAR win as an owner-driver (in the Cup Series). The win came at the Darlington spring race, and he punched his way into the NASCAR Playoffs for the first time in three years.
Leading up to that Darlington win, and even for a few races after it, it looked like Keselowski was on a hot streak. In the first 15 races of the 2024 season, Keselowski managed 7 top-5 finishes, including the win at Darlington and two runner-up finishes at Texas and Talladega. Unfortunately, from there, his season took a bit of a dip. In the Round of 16, Keselowski finished 19th, 26th, and 26th on his way to an unceremonious first-round exit.
Ty Gibbs has had a mostly quiet season in 2024, much like his previous two seasons. That said, he did show marked improvement between the years and ran more consistently in the top half of the field. Despite not winning a race, he was able to qualify for his first appearance in the NASCAR Playoffs this year. In 2024, he has earned 8 top-5 finishes (including a runner-up at the spring Darlington race) and 12 top-10s. His biggest problem was that when he wasn’t in contention for a top 10, he was usually running somewhere between 17th and 20th.
2024 was a strange year for Alex Bowman. While always being considered the “fourth Hendrick car”, he put up some decent numbers. But not even a win in the streets of Chicago was enough to silence the murmurs that he may be on his way out of HMS come 2025. It seems almost cruel at this point. But aside from the “haters” whispering in his ear, 2024 will always be Bowman’s “what could have been” season. Initially, Alex Bowman was able to advance to the Round of 8. But unfortunately, the number 48 Chevy failed post-race inspection following the Charlotte Roval due to his car being too light. This led to the 48 crew being disqualified and relegated to last place, thus ending his playoff run.
His 2024 numbers are as follows: 1 win, 7 top-5s, and 17 top-10s. Despite nasty rumors, Bowman the Showman will return to HMS in 2025 to continue his quest for the Cup.
Unfortunately for MTJ, 2024, his swan song season, is one that would be better left forgotten. Yes, he made the Playoffs, and yes, he started the year off decently enough. But he ultimately failed to rise to the standard of his previous season, which saw him win multiple races and the regular season championship. Infamously, in 2023, MTJ suffered a Playoff fall for the ages. That mostly continued on into 2024. Following his luke-warm start, Truex went through a long stretch of either mediocre finishes or just plain bad ones. Via playoff points, he was able to sneak out of the Round of 16, but he got no farther, getting eliminated in the Round of 12 at the Charlotte Roval with a 21st-place finish.
Heading into 2024, Denny Hamlin touted that this was his year. Too bad it wasn’t. He started the year off strong, leading the points in a handful of weeks early on. He won a barnburner of a race at Bristol and backed it up with wins at Richmond and Dover. He then put together a string of top-5 finishes before a 38th-place finish at Sonoma set him back.
What followed was anything but inspiring. Once an early championship favorite, Hamlin’s season collapsed under him as he faded into irrelevancy. He did somehow manage to advance to the Round of 8 in the Playoffs…but that was with some big help from Playoff points. In the Round of 8 cutoff race at Martinsville, Hamlin was largely irrelevant. He wasn’t in contention and was treated more like an afterthought. He was ultimately eliminated from the Playoffs. Looks like he’ll have to wait for 2025 to finally win that big one.
NASCAR’s most popular driver did one thing in 2024 that he failed to do in 2023–win. He also qualified for the Playoffs this year. Like Hamlin, Elliotts 2024 got off to a strong start. In fact, he was a favorite early on to win the regular season championship. In the end, he didn’t do that. But he did come fairly close, despite his season petering off towards the end. He was able to make it all the way to the Round of 8 but a 33rd place finish at Las Vegas put him in a deep hole he never did climb out of.
Entering Martinsville, Chase Elliott was in a must-win situation to advance. These dire circumstances led to the 9 crew choosing an aggressive pit strategy by staying out on older tires as the laps wound down. Unfortunately for Elliott, he was ultimately chased down and passed by his good friend, Ryan Blaney, who went on to win the race. Elliott was eliminated from the NASCAR Playoffs and will have to live to fight another day, hopefully in 2025.
2024 will always be the year that Kyle Larson won six races and competed in the Indianapolis 500. No one can ever take that away from him. He also nearly won the regular season championship, losing out to Tyler Reddick in the Southern 500. The biggest problem Larson faced in 2024 is his inconsistency. He won. A lot. But when he wasn’t winning, he was usually wrecking or spinning out. Like his teammate Chase Elliott, Larson entered Martinsville in a must-win scenario. And though he finished 3rd, he wasn’t able to get the job done. Why was he in this situation to begin with? Because he was unable to capitalize on his win at the Roval.
‘He ran a decent Round of 8 campaign, but it was fairly bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of legitimate contenders. It all came to a head with a Ryan Blaney win at Martinsville, which ultimately bumped Larson out of a Playoff spot. Looks like he’ll have to wait yet another year to capture his second NASCAR Cup Series title.
That does it for this list, Daily Downforce readers. How did your favorite driver do in 2024? Did they make the playoffs? If so, have they already been eliminated or are they still in the hunt? Let us know! And be sure to keep tuning in right here at DailyDownforce.com for all the latest news and stories in the world of NASCAR!
