Dr. Diandra: How level is the playing field after 50 Next Gen races?

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Last weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 marks 50 Next Gen races. The 2022 season produced 19 different winners, including a few first-career wins. Let’s see what the data say about how level the playing field is now.

I’m comparing the first 50 Next Gen races (the 2022 season plus the first 14 races of 2023) to the 2020 season and the first 14 races of 2021. I selected those two sets of races to produce roughly the same types of tracks. I focus on top-10 finishes as a metric for performance. Below, I show the top-10 finishes for the 13 drivers who ran for the same team over the periods in question.

A table comparing top-10 rates for drivers in the Gen-6 and Next Gen cars, limited to drivers who ran for the same team the entire time.

Because some drivers missed races, I compare top-10 rates: the number of top-10 finishes divided by the number of races run. The graph below shows changes in top-10 rates for the drivers who fared the worst with the Next Gen car.

A graph showing drivers who have done better in the next-gen car than the Gen-6 car.

Six drivers had double-digit losses in their top-10 rates. Kevin Harvick had the largest drop, with 74% top-10 finishes in the Gen-6 sample but only 46% top-10 finishes in the first 50 Next Gen races.

Kyle Larson didn’t qualify for the graph because he ran only four races in 2020. I thought it notable, however, that despite moving from the now-defunct Chip Ganassi NASCAR team to Hendrick Motorsports, Larson’s top-10 rate fell from 66.7% to 48.0%.

The next graph shows the corresponding data for drivers who improved their finishes in the Next Gen car. This graph again includes only drivers who stayed with the same team.

A graph showing the drivers who have fewer top-10 finishes in the Next Gen car than the Gen-6 car

Alex Bowman had a marginal gain, but he missed six races this year. Therefore, his percent change value is less robust than other drivers’ numbers.

Expanding the field

I added drivers who changed teams to the dataset and highlighted them in gray.

A table comparing top-10 rates for drivers in the Gen-6 and Next Gen cars

A couple notes on the new additions:

  • Brad Keselowski had the largest loss in top-10 rate of any driver, but that may be more attributable to his move from Team Penske to RFK Motorsports rather than to the Next Gen car.
  • Christopher Bell moved from Leavine Family Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2021. His improvement is likely overestimated due to equipment quality differences.
  • Erik Jones stayed even, but that’s after moving from JGR (13 top-10 finishes in 2020) to Richard Petty Motorsports (six top 10s in 2021.) I view that change as a net positive.

At the end of last season, I presented the tentative hypothesis that older drivers had a harder time adapting to the Next Gen car. Less practice time mitigated their experience dialing in a car so that it was to their liking given specific track conditions.

But something else leaps out from this analysis.

Is the playing field tilting again?

Michael McDowell is not Harvick-level old, but he will turn 39 this year. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is 35. Both have improved with the Next Gen Car. Chase Elliott (27 years old) and William Byron (25) aren’t old, either, but their top-10 rates have gone down.

Drivers running for the best-funded teams earned fewer top-10 finishes while drivers from less-funded teams (mostly) gained those finishes.

Trackhouse Racing and 23XI — two of the newest teams — account for much of the gains in top-10 finishes. Ross Chastain isn’t listed in the table because he didn’t have full-time Cup Series rides in 2020 or 2021. His 9.1% top-10 rate in that period is with lower-level equipment. He earned 27 top-10 finishes in the first 50 races (54%) with the Next Gen car.

This analysis suggests that age isn’t the only relevant variable. One interpretation of the data thus far is that the Next Gen (and its associated rules changes) eliminated the advantage well-funded teams built up over years of racing the Gen-5 and Gen-6 cars.

The question now is whether that leveling effect is wearing off. Even though parts are the same, more money means being able to hire the best people and buying more expensive computers for engineering simulations.

Compare the first 14 races of 2022 to the first 14 of 2023.

  • Last year at this time, 23XI and Trackhouse Racing had each won two races. This year, they combine for one win.
  • It took Byron eight races to win his second race of the year in 2022. This year, he won the third and fourth races of the year. Plus, he’s already won his third race this year.
  • Aside from Stenhouse’s Daytona 500 win, this year’s surprise winners — Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Blaney — are both from major teams.

We’re only 14 races into the 2023 season. There’s not enough data to determine the relative importance of age versus building a notebook for predicting success in the Next Gen car.

But this is perhaps the most important question. The Next Gen car leveled the playing field last year.

Will it stay level?

NASCAR Cup Series results: Ryan Blaney wins at Charlotte

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CONCORD, N.C. — Ryan Blaney outran William Byron over the final miles and through several restarts to win Monday’s 600-mile NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Blaney thus ended a 59-race winless streak and qualified for the Cup playoffs.

Following in the top five were Byron, Martin Truex Jr., Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick.

Charlotte Cup results

Charlotte Cup driver points

Ryan Blaney wins NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway

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CONCORD, N.C. — It was the longest wait for the longest race, and it ended on a very long day. And it marked the end of a long winless streak.

Ryan Blaney sprinted away from William Byron in the closing laps of Monday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and ended a 59-race winless streak.

Byron finished second and was followed by Martin Truex Jr., Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick.

MORE: What drivers said at Charlotte

MORE: Charlotte Cup results, driver points

Blaney pushed through several late-race restarts and held on to finally write finish to a frustrating losing string. The win marked the first time long-time team owner Roger Penske has won both the Indy 500 and Coke 600 in the same year.

“You start to get to feel like you can’t win any more when you don’t win for a while,” an emotional Blaney told Fox Sports after the race.

Following the lead of his Team Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, who won Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 and went into the stands to celebrate with fans, Blaney ran into the frontstretch grandstands after grabbing the checkered flag.

Contender Kyle Larson lost control of his car on a restart with 26 laps to go, starting a crash that also involved Joey Logano, Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell.

Blaney, 29, scored the eighth win of his career. He last won at Daytona International Speedway in August 2021 and had posted four runne-rup finishes during that span.

“I tried not to think about that very much,” Blaney said of the losing streak. “It’s hard to win these races. Sometimes you get in these streaks where things don’t go right. It can definitely be frustrating. It’s easy to get down on yourself when you don’t win. You got to think to yourself can I still do it. Can I compete at a winning level?”

A mid-race collision between Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin left their cars seriously damaged and their feelings hurt. They were racing in close quarters on Lap 186 when contact between the two cars sent Hamlin hard into the wall, resulting in major front-end damage. Elliott’s car sustained serious rear damage.

Hamlin said Elliott had a “tantrum” and that he should be suspended for the next race for what Hamlin called “a right rear hook.” Elliott denied intentionally wrecking Hamlin.

A few laps earlier, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski crashed.

The third-stage win went to Blaney. Following were Reddick, Truex, Byron and Ty Gibbs.

Chris Buescher won the second stage, leading Kevin Harvick, Keselowski, Joey Logano and Gibbs.

Byron won the first stage, leading a three-way battle with Christopher Bell and Blaney on the 100th lap. Bell was second, Blaney third, Reddick fourth and Truex Jr. fifth.

A crash involving Bubba Wallace and Aric Almirola resulted in the drivers having a tense red-flag discussion. Almirola shoved Wallace before the altercation was broken up.

Stage 1 winner: William Byron

Stage 2 winner: Chris Buescher

Stage 3 winner: Ryan Blaney

Who had a good race: Ryan Blaney had the day’s fastest car and held off a following herd over the final miles. … William Byron was strong throughout the race but couldn’t challenge Blaney at the end. … The fourth-place finish by Bubba Wallace and the fifth-place run by Tyler Reddick marked the first time 23XI Racing has put two cars in the top five in a points race.

Who had a bad race: Seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson had a tough day in his third race of the year. He lost control of his car 74 laps into the race and slapped the outside wall. He lost a lap in the pits and ultimately finished last. … Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin had top-10 cars but both left the race after a controversial collision near the halfway point.

Next: The series races June 4 at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1).

Charlotte NASCAR Cup Series starting lineup: Rain cancels qualifying

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CONCORD, N.C. — William Byron and Kevin Harvick will start Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series 600-mile race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the front row after wet weather cancelled Saturday night qualifying.

Rain pelted the CMS area much of the day Saturday, and NASCAR announced at 3:45 p.m. that Cup practice and qualifying, scheduled for Saturday night, had been cancelled.

MORE: Alex Bowman confident as he returns to cockpit

The starting field was set by the NASCAR rulebook.

Following Byron and Harvick in the starting top 10 will be Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

The elimination of the practice session was particularly problematic for Alex Bowman, scheduled to return to racing Sunday after missing three weeks with a back injury, and Jimmie Johnson, who will be starting only his third race this year. Johnson will start 37th — last in the field.

Charlotte Cup starting lineup

Dr. Diandra: Driver injuries, penalties obscure Hendrick Motorsports’ excellence

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Hendrick Motorsports’ excellence doesn’t leap out from the Cup Series championship standings. William Byron is fifth and Kyle Larson ninth. Alex Bowman, who missed three races with a fractured vertebra, ranks 17th. Chase Elliott (out six races while healing a broken leg) is back in 28th place.

In addition to losing two drivers for multiple races, Hendrick fought a contentious battle over hood louvers it claimed didn’t meet specifications. The modifications initially incurred 100-point/10-playoff-point penalties for all four teams. An appeal reduced those penalties to monetary fines and crew chief suspensions.

Then, at Richmond, Byron and Bowman were each assessed 60-point/five-playoff-point penalties for violations involving their cars’ greenhouses.

Despite being far enough back in the standings that only winning will get him into the playoffs, Elliott has more points than five full-time drivers. Bowman ranks ahead of 15 drivers who have each run three more races than he has.

Without that 60-point penalty, Byron would be leading the standings, 18 points ahead of Ross Chastain.

The points don’t reflect how good Hendrick Motorsports is in 2023 — but the statistics do.

Manufacturer and team domination

Manufacturer advantage changes over time, as the graph below shows. Chevy has rebounded from its 2018 low point, where it won only four races all year. With eight wins in the first 13 races of 2023, Chevy has already beat its season totals from 2018 and ’19.

A stacked verticle bar chart emphasizing Chevy (and Hendrick Motorsports' excellence over the years

Chevy’s excellence translates to Hendrick Motorsports’ excellence. HMS earned five of those eight race wins.

That’s not unusual: Hendrick did the same last year. But this year the team did it with nine fewer chances. That’s not to discount Josh Berry‘s solid subbing for Elliott and then Bowman. But no one expects a first-year driver (with a full-time Xfinity job) to match Cup Series veterans’ numbers.

Byron’s three wins are the most of any driver in the series. Larson joins Kyle Busch as the only other drivers with more than one win in 2023.

Byron also leads the series in top-five finishes with six. Larson, Chastain and Christopher Bell each have five top-five finishes. Byron is tied with Ryan Blaney for second in top-10 results with seven. Christopher Bell leads the top-10 category with eight.

Because two drivers have missed races, performance rates create a clearer picture than straight numbers. The table below summarizes HMS driver performance.

A table showing Hendrick Motorsports' finishines for 2023

I included Josh Berry’s numbers. No one expects a first-year driver (with a full-time Xfinity job) to match Cup Series veterans’ numbers, but he’s been quite a solid substitute driver.

As I pointed out previously, Larson’s numbers are low this year because he hasn’t finished almost a third of the races. The most DNFs Larson ever had in one season is eight, which happened in 2019. With 23 races left, Larson already has half that number. He has been the victim of incidents triggered by Chastain multiple times this season, leading to car owner Rick Hendrick voicing his displeasure about Chastain’s driving after the Darlington race earlier this month.

Another sign of Larson’s season is that he has only one more top-10 finish than Elliott despite running six more races than Elliott.

Running Stats

In distinction to finishes, statistics like running position and average green-flag speed rank show how a driver runs as opposed to just how they finish. These are the numbers that really highlight HMS’s potential.

A table showing Hendrick Motorsports' excellence via their loop data stats

I included average finish for comparing with average running position. For example, the difference between Larson’s average finish versus his average running position shows the impact of his DNFs.

The last three columns compare how each driver ranks, on average, in green-flag speed, speed early in a run and speed late in a run.

While Berry’s numbers are lower than his four colleagues, they’re not much lower.

The table below shows the same data but ranks each driver against all other drivers who have run at least three races.

A table showing how Hendrick Motorsports ranks in various loop data statisticsHendrick Motorsports drivers hold the No. 1 rank in each of the first four metrics shown and the No. 2 rank in three out of the four. The highest rank in speed late in run is third, but their success despite that shows the importance of running in clean air. If you build a lead at the start of a run, you don’t have to be the fastest at the end — as Larson showed at the All-Star Race.

It’s a shame for the Hendrick drivers — and especially Alex Bowman, who was on track to have a statistically strong year — that their chances at a season championship may be impaired by missed races and unfulfilled potential. But it’s a good reminder for fans that season rankings rarely tell the whole story.