Joe Gibbs Racing Signs Top Prospect For 2025 Season
What’s Happening? Joe Gibbs Racing finally filled out its 2025 Xfinity Series lineup. Monday afternoon, JGR officially announced that they signed…
William Sawalich is Joe Gibbs Racing’s next top prospect. Monday afternoon, JGR awarded him a full-time ride with the team’s Xfinity Series program in 2025. But there is one lingering question about him: was he ready for this step?
What’s Happening? Joe Gibbs Racing finally filled out its 2025 Xfinity Series lineup. Monday afternoon, JGR officially announced that they signed…
William Sawalich is only 18 years old, but he has taken NASCAR’s developmental series by storm. With back-to-back ARCA Menards Series East Championships, he has caught the eye of those in the pits and the stands.
To some, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series was the logical next step for Sawalich, with the young driver making part-time starts with Tricon Garage in the past two seasons. However, on Monday afternoon, a few days before his Xfinity Series debut, JGR announced that Sawalich would join the series full-time in 2025.
Why the jump so soon? For some time now, Joe Gibbs Racing has taken this step with prospects they feel are going all the way. They made this move most recently with Ty Gibbs, which paid off with an Xfinity Series title in 2022 and Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors in 2023.
His skill in ARCA was enough to prove he has what it takes to Coach Gibbs and the rest of JGR. So why are some fans still so cautious about Sawalich?
@brakehard WILLIAM SAWALICH OFFFICIALLY JOINS JOE GIBBS RACING NASCAR XFINITY TEAM IN 2025 #nascar #racing #motorsport ♬ original sound – brakehard
Quality of equipment, despite NASCAR’s best efforts, still makes a major difference in any driver’s career. While William has dominated the ARCA Menards series, this has come in Joe Gibbs Racing equipment.
This raises the question of whether Sawalich is benefiting from his superior equipment or sheer driving skill. Sawalich rarely lost an ARCA race this year but struggled at other levels.
To Sawalich’s benefit, he ran consistently and brought the car home on the lead lap all but once in over 20 starts in all three ARCA Series. In the past, we have seen several drivers in good equipment perform not nearly as well as Sawalich this year.
What can the stats tell us about his development?
While Sawalich dominated ARCA this season, he, like any superstar, had his kryptonite. This came in the form of Trackhouse racing superstar Connor Zilisch, who’s emergence overshadowed Sawalich’s winning.
In six head-to-head ARCA Races this season, Zilisch won four while Sawalich won two. During those weeks, these two young hotshots clearly had the best cars on track.
When comparing the two who are making the same jump, one thing favors the Chevy driver, which is that Zilisch is already a winner in Xfinity. But in the ARCA East Series, while Zilisch continued to win the battles, Sawalich won the war and the Championship after Zilisch crashed out at Bristol.
So, if Sawlaich is jumping trucks, how did he race in a truck?
While Sawalich was winning in ARCA, he made part-time starts with Tricon Garage in the No. 1 Truck. Tricon is Toyota’s top team, and despite this, Sawlaich struggled for in-race consistency. William posted a strong average starting position of 11.7. Unfortunately, his average finish was 19th.
While the stats in the Truck Series don’t show success, they do, however, show a very young driver living and learning. Of course, there are outside factors that affect these statistics. But Sawalich has, time and time again, proven he can handle himself in any racecar.
What’s Happening? The NASCAR Rookie of the Year battle is one of the best storylines to watch across all three…
Lucky for us, we have many examples of drivers doing this, as “untraditional” routes to the top are becoming increasingly common. For instance, take Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar.
Hocevar, at just 21 years old, leaped over the Xfinity Series, making only five starts before going full-time in the Cup Series this year. Hocevar’s four-win Truck Series campaign last year has turned into a Cup Series season in which he is the clear-cut Rookie of the Year in a strong class.
What about someone who skipped just the Truck Series?
Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love had a similar route to Sawalich, and that has resulted in a Round of Eight appearance and a one-win campaign so far for the 19-year-old. Love is running away with Rookie of the Year, beating out SuperCars Champion and three-race winner Shane Van Gisbergen.
What about a fellow Toyota driver? Ty Gibbs took the same route as Sawalich, but there are a few differences.
Before winning the 2022 Xfinity Series championship, Gibbs, unlike Sawalich, started a half-season at the Xfinity Series before jumping to full-time competition. These two are on similar routes, but with this one note, those routes look a little different.
While this worked out for Gibbs, he has yet to win a Cup Series race but is slowly improving. Does this mean that Sawalich is on his way to Xfinity Series glory? Not necessarily, but it proves that good equipment doesn’t necessarily mean that the talent won’t transfer over.
When you put aside team names, equipment, and accolades, success in 2025 will be up to Sawalich. But will he be up for the challenge like he has so many times before?
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EchoPark Speedway, or Atlanta Motor Speedway, is often touted as the most exciting track on the NASCAR circuit. What was first seen as a Frankenstein experiment, Marcus Smith’s idea to turn AMS into a baby Daytona worked out in the end. We’ve gotten great race after great race and tonight was no different as fans saw Tyler Reddick power by Carson Hocevar to go two in a row to start the season.
But not everyone had a season to remember. Many drivers and teams had a season that they’d sooner forget. These are the biggest losers of the 2026 EchoPark Speedway racing weekend.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race officials rightly got blasted online by fans after they made the extremely questionable decision to put the Truck race on Saturday on the weather clock. That would have been an understandable move if circumstances were different. But they caught flak because 1.) EchoPark Speedway has lights, 2.) the weather had moved out for the weekend, and 3.)…umm…they were only 10 laps shy from the scheduled distance anyway.
Now, we know who the defenders are. The O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Race was slated to follow, but NASCAR has pushed races off in the past. And really, how much time would the CW have lost? Ten minutes? Twenty? If that? That, in my book, makes the NCTS officials some of the biggest losers on the weekend. They owe us fans ten more measly laps for racing!
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Of any driver currently in the Chevy ranks, none has had the support thrown behind them like Corey Day. Day, a protege of proven NASCAR champion Kyle Larson, apparently has turned some heads on the dirt scene. Makes sense, since Larson himself said that he’d rather win the Chili Bowl than the Daytona 500. But unlike other drivers, such as Connor Zilisch, who have excelled in other racing disciplines outside of NASCAR, Day’s career so far has been lukewarm at best. And his race yesterday was the epitome of a rookie race, ladened with senseless mistakes.
The incident that hurt the most was the one where he wrecked his fellow HMS/JRM teammates, Carson Kvapil and Justin Allgaier. He simply just took them out while racing for the race lead. Though he was, somehow, able to rebound to finish the race in the 4th position, yesterday was a sloppy performance that even Corey himself acknowledges that he’d rather put behind him.
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Chastain did it again! And now, the feelings are mixed. Remember when Ross Chastain used to just send drivers willy-nilly, and it really got on fans’ nerves? Well, thankfully, he’s calmed down in recent years and has become a more respectable veteran of the sport. That is not to say that he still doesn’t have his…moments. Saturday night at the O’Reilly Auto Parts race, Ross Chastain, going for the win, entered turn 1 and sent leader Austin Hill.
Hill was the overwhelming favorite to win this race, and fans have grown sick of him. So, really, this was a welcome return to form for Chastain, a version of him that used to be loathed by fans. Thus, while fans might have won out by Chastain doing what he does best and slaying Austin Hill, the RCR team, and really, anyone who has Chastain in their rearview mirror in the closing laps, are the real losers this weekend.
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There were a couple of drivers who ended 2025 on a sour note and were looking to turn things around and start 2026 strong. One of those has to be Josh Berry and his entire Wood Brothers team. After floundering around with Harrison Burton for a few seasons, the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford got the shot in the arm that they needed with a new crew chief and Josh Berry as their new driver. They led a bunch of laps at Atlanta in 2025, only for a wreck with 10 laps to go to take them out of contention. Not to worry, though: they followed it up with a win at Las Vegas.
But since that win, the team suffered a steep decline heading into the summer months. By the time the postseason rolled around, they had the single worst Playoff performance in history with three straight last-place finishes. Though he had a promising start to the season with a 9th-place run in the Daytona 500, it was the same old same old tonight. Berry showed some speed in the first stage but ultimately crashed after Christopher Bell forced the issue in the beginning of Stage 2. It’s a familiar routine for the Wood Brothers. Yet another last-place finish. That makes them one of the biggest losers of the weekend. If only they could have capitalized.
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This one’s a tired subject, so I won’t dwell on it too long. Kyle Busch’s late career decline at Richard Childress Racing should be studied. Though he showed speed early on, it was yet again a single-car spin that ended his day prematurely. Granted, he didn’t spin completely on his own. He was tagged from behind by Noah Gragson. But, that was after he checked up twice and recklessly pulled up in front of him in a hole that was barely there. Yet another disappointing outing for Rowdy Nation.
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The checkered flag has flown in the second race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Season. And, at the end of the day, it was Tyler Reddick who went back-to-back to win at EchoPark Speedway. Tonight, Reddick became the sixth NASCAR Cup Series driver to win the first two races of the season. He is the first since NASCAR Hall of Famer Matt Kenseth did it to kick off the 2009 season.
But, of course, Reddick wasn’t the only one to have a great start to the season. Several drivers leave Atlanta with a great points day, including Carson Hocevar, Bubba Wallace, William Byron, and Ryan Blaney. Here are the highlights of tonight’s race:
From an awful showing in the 2025 Playoffs to yet another last-place finish, Josh Berry’s 2026 season is off to a rough start. Today, he got together with Ty Gibbs after Gibbs had an awful start to the year last year. The No. 54 was able to turn it around later in the season, though. But, for their 2026 outing, there’s a lot left to be desired. Check it out.
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Kyle Busch’s 2025 season was abysmal. But, after he put his No. 8 RCR Chevy on the pole for the 2026 Daytona 500, things seemed to be looking up. He smartly survived last week by lying back on the last lap and safely navigating through the crash, finishing 15th. And he was a contender early in this race. However, late, Kyle Busch continued his dismal legacy at RCR by spinning after contact with Noah Gragson. His day ended prematurely. Check it out:
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We got our first big crash of the race at Lap 224 when both Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano got loose in front of the field. You can read all about that incident with the link below:
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Things started to get real for the NASCAR Cup Series drivers as we got inside 40 laps to go. We got our first Big One of the afternoon at Lap 224. It was triggered as the field came out of Turn 4 and entered the dogleg. Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin, both whose cars were upset by the dirty air, got together. Logano was able to scoot on virtually unscathed. However, Hamlin turned in front of the pack, collecting several stars and heavy hitters. Here’s what happened:
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