10 Most Important NASCAR Cup Stories of 2023

Many racing organizations automatically knee-jerk their season-long championship as their most important story of the year. They hold that since their champion earned the most praise and was most successful (think Max Verstappen), why shouldn’t his (or her) accomplishment be the year’s leading story?

In many cases, yes. In the case of NASCAR ’23 Cup Series champion, it doesn’t quite work that way. Upon further review….

First-time champion Ryan Blaney of Team Penske had to scramble just to make our top-10 recap. He’s there, but down toward the bottom of the “second-5.” He had a fine season, indeed, with no reason to apologize to anyone for anything. But, in truth, his season was simply okay except for the moment he hoisted the Bill France Trophy after the Nov. 5 season-finale at Phoenix Raceway.

The third-generation racer won the Cup with three victories in 36 starts. William Byron (six victories) and former champion Kyle Larson (four) won more. Additionally, Denny Hamlin and Chris Buescher also won three, as did former champions Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch. In fact, 17 of the previous 20 Cup-holders won more than three times during their championship seasons. Two years ago, after a NASCAR suspension cost him most of a season, 2021 champion Larson was a 10-time winner.

Not only did Blaney not win often, he didn’t lead the series in any meaningful statistic: top-5 finishes, top-10 finishes, top-20 finishes, races led, laps led, running at the finish, and on and on and on. Spare us the argument that winning the championship should automatically be the story of the year. If that’s all it took, we wouldn’t need any discussion.

So, what were the nine other big stories – both positive and negative – of the 2023 Cup Series season? Mostly in chronological order:

+. The fast start and dismal finish of Richard Childress/Kyle Busch. Series-watchers wondered how the once-bitter rivals might behave when Busch got in an RCR-prepared Chevrolet. He’d won two Cups with Joe Gibbs Racing and Childress had won six with Dale Earnhardt, so as the Eagles sang… “this could be heaven or this could be hell.”

In truth, it was some of both. Busch won spring races at Fontana and Talladega, and at St. Louis in June. He easily made the 16-driver Playoff field and seemed at least capable of advancing a couple of rounds. But he didn’t get far, largely due to 34th- and 25th-place finishes in the fall at Fort Worth and Talladega. He had two third-place finishes late in the Playoff, but also finished 18th, 27th, and 25th, the latter in the Phoenix finale.

Truth be told, hardly anyone expected that sort of finish after such a strong beginning;

+. The steady improvement of Trackhouse Racing is a tribute to owner Justin Marks and drivers Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez. After winning three times in 2022 and making the Playoffs with both drivers, the relatively young Trackhouse organization outshone many of its better-funded rivals.

Chastain won at Nashville to make the Playoffs, then won at Phoenix on a bittersweet day when he wasn’t championship eligible. Suarez made the Playoffs on points, but struggled to match 2022, when he got his breakthrough victory at Sonoma. In a storybook one-off, New Zealand native Shane Van Gisbergen won on the streets of Chicago in his NASCAR debut for Trackhouse.

That gave Trackhouse a solid season: three victories, 14 combined top-5 finishes and 25 top-10s in the organization’s third Cup season. Chastain finished ninth in points and Suarez a disappointing 19th;

+. NASCAR and its corporate partners spent untold millions (tens of millions?) and countless thousands man-hours to prepare, promote, and stage three events that dominated much of the middle portion of the season.

In May, in a concession to aging fans who sought a return to “the good ol’ days of real racing,” NASCAR sent its All-Star race to North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway, which last hosted a Cup race in 1996. Speedway Motorsports Inc. spiffed up the 5/8ths-mile track, sold out the place, and enjoyed the feel-good story of the season. It didn’t take long for all parties to say they’ll be back for the ’24 All-Star race.

In June, while its teams were at Sonoma, NASCAR sent a tricked-up Chevrolet Camaro to the 24 Hours of LeMans. The Chevrolet/Hendrick Motorsports/NASCAR/Goodyear project was the Garage 56 entry, designed to showcase advanced automotive technological and mechanical developments to a worldwide audience.

Semi-retired Cup star Jimmie Johnson led the team, which included noted road racers Mike Rockenfeller and Jenson Button. The Camaro performed about as well as expected, but the overriding goal was simply to be there, make laps, and expose a small sample of stock car racing to European fans.

And several weeks later, during the July 4 holiday period, NASCAR promoted an official race through the streets of downtown Chicago. After 75 years on purpose-built road courses and ovals, the organization finally went racing in the middle of one of America’s most famous cities. Alas, foul weather impacted the event, but apparently didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. Officials said 80 percent of the available tickets were bought by people who’d never seen a stock car race in person.

The much-hyped weekend got even better when Trackhouse Racing driver Van Gisbergen – unfamiliar to perhaps 90 percent of American fans – won in his first Cup start. It was NASCAR’s first debut victory since Johnny Rutherford in a 1963 Daytona 500 qualifier for Smokey Yunick.

The Grant Park 220 wasn’t especially entertaining: 27 percent was under caution and the average green-flag runs were only six laps. But no matter: NASCAR had proved it could successfully present a race on virtually any type course, even to the point of shutting down parts of a major city for several days.

No surprise here: despite a few complaints by city residents, officials quickly said the race would return in 2024;

+. The late Wendell Scott was the first African-American to win a Cup race, at Jacksonville, Fla. in December of 1963. The hardscrabble independent never cracked the top-10 in season points during his Hall of Fame career, finishing a career-best 12th in 1964.

Bubba Wallace topped that top-10 goal in 2023. Driving the No. 23 Toyota for the 23XI team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, the sport’s most polarizing driver had top-5 finishes at Las Vegas, Kansas City, Darlington, Charlotte, and Fort Worth, and top-10s at Martinsville, Loudon, Darlington (again), Homestead, and Phoenix. Being 10th-ranked was the best finish by an African-American driver in NASCAR’s 75 seasons;

+. By almost any measure, 2023 couldn’t have gone much worse for fan favorite Chase Elliott. First, the 2020 Cup Series champion missed six early-season races after breaking his left leg during a snowboarding accident in Colorado. Later, he was suspended a week for rough driving against Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May.

After winning at least once a year throughout his seven-year career, the second-generation driver had only seven top-5 finishes and 15 top-10s to show for 29 starts. He missed the playoffs for the first time and finished a career-worst 17th in points. But there’s always this good news: it’s almost a cinch he’ll be named Most Popular Driver for the sixth consecutive year when that award is presented at the annual awards banquet in Nashville;

+. Did anyone see this one coming? After being a Playoff regular for 15 seasons and a Championship-4 challenger for five, Denny Hamlin had a mediocre season and didn’t qualify for the championship race.

The Joe Gibbs Racing star was among the 16 championship hopefuls when the Playoffs began in September. He easily made it through the first two rounds, but a mechanical failure at Homestead kept him from getting to the championship race two weeks later.

He finished fifth in the final standings, his eighth top-5 points finish in 16 full seasons. He won regular-season races at Kansas City and Pocono, and then again at Bristol in the Playoffs. He was a factor in almost every race – seven top-10 finishes in the 10 Playoff races – but the DNF at Homestead was too much to overcome;

+. After struggling for years to regain the form that team owner Jack Roush brought to NASCAR in 1988, Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing had a breakout season. In its second year with Keselowski on its management team, RFK won three races – all from Buescher – and both Buescher and Keselowski made the playoffs.

The Ford-based company is still a long way from when Mark Martin, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, and Greg Biffle were in its cars. Even so, Keselowski and Buescher have made on- and off-track strides that many might not have anticipated a few years ago;

+. Two champions and a well-regarded veteran retired after the season. Kevin Harvick (2014 champion) retired after a bittersweet winless season and Kurt Busch (2004) made his retirement official more than a year after he was sidelined with head injuries at Pocono. Aric Almirola never achieved their level on-track success, but also never embarrassed himself, his family, his team, or the sport during his career;

+. And no review of 2023 would be proper without serious words about William Byron. Very quietly, almost without any fanfare, the on-line college student led the Cup Series with six victories in the No. 24 Chevrolet he inherited from four-time champion Jeff Gordon.

He won early season races at Las Vegas and Phoenix, came home to win at Darlington and Atlanta, then won at Watkins Glen and the Playoff race at Texas. Except for stubbed-toes at Kansas and Martinsville, he and crew chief Ruby Fuge were top-10 in eight of the 10 Playoff races, completing all but one of the possible 3,044 laps.

They were solid in the Championship-4 at Phoenix, but not quite solid enough. Ross Chastain won the race (the first Cup-ineligible driver to win the finale), with Playoff drivers Blaney, Larson, and Byron not far behind. After starting 2023 with only four victories in his 180 previous starts, Byron came out the other side with 10.

Story of the year? Why not?

Many racing organizations automatically knee-jerk their season-long championship as their most important story of the year.

They hold that since their champion earned the most praise and was most successful (think Max Verstappen), why shouldn’t his (or her) accomplishment be the year’s leading story?

In many cases, yes. In the case of NASCAR ’23 Cup Series champion, it doesn’t quite work that way.

Upon further review….

Kyle Busch Goes from Fast Start to Dismal Finish

The fast start and dismal finish of Richard Childress/Kyle Busch.

Series-watchers wondered how the once-bitter rivals might behave when Busch got in an RCR-prepared Chevrolet. He’d won two Cups with Joe Gibbs Racing and Childress had won six with Dale Earnhardt, so as the Eagles sang… “this could be heaven or this could be hell.”

In truth, it was some of both.

Busch won spring races at Fontana and Talladega, and at St. Louis in June. He easily made the 16-driver Playoff field and seemed at least capable of advancing a couple of rounds. But he didn’t get far, largely due to 34th- and 25th-place finishes in the fall at Fort Worth and Talladega.

He had two third-place finishes late in the Playoff, but also finished 18th, 27th, and 25th, the latter in the Phoenix finale.

Truth be told, hardly anyone expected that sort of finish after such a strong beginning.

Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing Shakes Things Up

The steady improvement of Trackhouse Racing is a tribute to owner Justin Marks and drivers Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez.

After winning three times in 2022 and making the Playoffs with both drivers, the relatively young Trackhouse organization outshone many of its better-funded rivals.

Chastain won at Nashville to make the Playoffs, then won at Phoenix on a bittersweet day when he wasn’t championship eligible. Suarez made the Playoffs on points, but struggled to match 2022, when he got his breakthrough victory at Sonoma.

In a storybook one-off, New Zealand native Shane Van Gisbergen won on the streets of Chicago in his NASCAR debut for Trackhouse.