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In a sport as personal as NASCAR, rivalries are going to happen. Great drivers like Earnhardt and Waltrip have traded blows on and off the track. However, 2024 has been distinct, with rivalries not being between two drivers but rather a rivalry of brands, teams, and drivers.
NASCAR and its teams have had a bumpy 2024. However, this drama is not the normal back-and-forth between teams pushing the limits and the sport fighting back.
2024 marked the end of the prior NASCAR Charter Agreement. Negotiations for a new agreement took place over the majority of the season. At times, both the Teams and NASCAR walked away from negotiations, with rumors of drama, wants, and fears swirling around the garage.
Curtis Polk, co-owner of 23XI Racing, even wore a sign at Darlington, calling out NASCAR on an “Anti-Disparagement Clause” the sport added to the agreement. Negotiations came to a head in Atlanta when 13 of 15 teams signed the new deal. However, these teams didn’t sound as willing as you’d expect.
Reports quickly emerged that NASCAR had given teams the massive agreement with a short yet hard deadline to read, sign, and return it. Owners anonymously told media members that they felt this was as good as it would get and that they felt like NASCAR was “putting a gun to our heads.”
One owner, however, has been more outspoken than others.
Denny Hamlin is a part-owner of 23XI Racing, one of the two teams that held out on the NASCAR Charter Agreement. This rebellion came after months of outspoken commentary from Hamlin on the negotiations and his frustrations with NASCAR.
No stranger to controversy, Hamlin, away from the negotiation table, found early drama this season. At Richmond, Hamlin allegedly got away with jumping a late restart, while NASCAR let it slide; this may not have been for the best. Hamlin upset not only fans but also media personalities and his teammate Martin Truex Jr.
NASCAR got Hamlin back later in the year. A hard-fought win at Bristol was revoked from Playoff admission as Toyota Racing Development tore down the winning engine before NASCAR could. This L2 penalty did not hurt Hamlin’s playoff hopes. However, it cost him several spots and a shot at the Regular Season Championship.
TRD took public responsibility for this, which was just a small part of what has been a long season for Toyota.
The battles between Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota have been less dramatic and more classic.
Early on, Chevy and Toyota traded wins for the first 12 races of the season. Chevy won seven races in that stretch before Brad Keselowski’s Ford finally found victory lane at Darlington.
After Keslowski’s win, Ford, despite looking outmatched, won eight of the following 14 races. These wins include Playoff drivers Harrison Burton, Chase Briscoe, and Joey Logano, who won the first Playoff race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The Fords are getting hot at the right time in the season. To their benefit, their winning ways have also happened while the Chevy and TRD teams are in-fighting.
NASCAR’s teams have long divided themselves by ownership boundaries. But in recent years, teams have shed those boundaries on drafting tracks, with your manufacturer being the deciding factor on who you help.
Young Chevrolet driver Parker Retzlaff found this out when he and his much smaller Beard Motorsports entry chose to push Harrison Burton to a win at Daytona rather than fellow Chevrolet driver Kyle Busch’s Richard Childress Racing entry.
Chevrolet was reportedly upset with Retzlaff, while Busch made it clear he didn’t blame Parker. We learned at Atlanta that this battle between large and small teams is ongoing.
On the final lap in Atlanta, Corey Heim, in a Sam Hunt Racing Toyota, chose to push Austin Hill’s Chevrolet over Chandler Smith’s Joe Gibbs Racing entry. Heim, who has little to nothing to do with JGR, caught heat from Smith and fans after the race.
The debate over whether a small team should help itself or its larger counterparts is a divisive issue in NASCAR. One team, however, found itself involved in both battles.
Richard Childress Racing’s Cup Series season started quietly, with poor runs from Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon. However, its Xfinity Series team began their season controversially.
The team’s lead driver, Austin Hill, has made a name for himself by winning on drafting tracks and his aggressive driving style. Hill won the first two races of the season cleanly. However, at Circuit of Americas, fan favorite Shane Van Gisbergen and Hill tangled late for the win.
At COTA, Hill and SVG, racing Kyle Larson for the win, made heavy contact multiple times, ending up with torn-up race cars, hurt feelings, and neither driver in victory lane. This drama bled into Sonoma, with the two tangling on SVG’s now iconic victory lap.
Sonoma was just a few weeks after Kyle Busch and Rickey Stenhouse Jr fought it out at North Wilkesboro, which is still not the main story of RCR’s season.
At Richmond’s fall race, Austin Dillon had a locked win until a late caution and restart left Dillon in second place on the final turn. Dillon subsequently spun leader Joey Logano and passerby Denny Hamlin for the win.
NASCAR later revoked Dillon’s automatic Playoff qualification, leaving Dillon out of the playoffs and in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. To make things worse, Richard Childress adamantly denied radio communications of Dillon’s spotter, telling Dillon to wreck the drivers despite multiple audio sources of the exchange.
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