One of the great aspects of the parity-driven 2022 Championship NASCAR The Cup Series season marked five record-setting drivers who claimed their first-ever wins at the sport’s highest level. But it would probably be more shocking if it happened again in 2023.
The 2022 cup season has benefited from a combination of factors to create a host of new winners.
The next-generation car has helped produce records for new and different Cup Series winners in 2022
the new Next generation The car model introduced by NASCAR took away many advantages enjoyed by larger organizations. Teams now had to buy their parts from a single supplier instead of manufacturing their own, and each team had to start the season with a blank notebook to improve the performance of the new car.
This resulted in 19 different winners being scored across the 36 points-paying events and greatly boosted the chances for drivers with smaller teams who would otherwise struggle to compete for top-ten spots, much less victories.
Austin Cindrick started the season by winning the Daytona 500 in his first race as a full-time driver. He then won Chase Briscoe three weeks later at Phoenix Raceway for the driver’s first Cup Series victory for a second year.
Ross Chastain He added his name to the list of Cup Series winners two weeks after Briscoe when he passed AJ Allmendinger and Alex Bowman for the win at Circuit of the Americas.
Tyler Reddick nearly joined the group of winners for the first time three weeks later in the dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway, but Briscoe collided with him in the final turn, allowing Kyle Busch to slip through for his 60th career win. Reddick had to wait until July at Road America to score his first Cup Series victory.
Daniel Suarez snuck his first ride into Cup Series lane at Sonoma Road two weeks ahead of Reddick. He dominated the second half of the event and accompanied teammate Chastain on the winners list for the first time with Trackhouse Racing.
The list of non-Cup Series winners has been greatly reduced
Without those drivers as potential first-time visitors to Victory Lane, the remaining driver list to celebrate their first Cup Series win is relatively short among drivers slated to run the entire 2023 season.
Ironically, the driver who tops the list is also the most experienced.
Ty Gibbs He won the 2022 Xfinity Series Championship and racked up an impressive 11 wins in just a year and a half in the series while driving his grandfather’s owned car for Joe Gibbs Racing. He also won 18 of the 47 ARCA Menards Series starting from 2019-21.
Gibbs made 15 Cup starts starting last year as a replacement driver in 23XI Racing for Kurt Busch after Busch suffered a head injury during a collision in July at Pocono Raceway. Gibbs ran a 10th-place finish at Michigan International Speedway in his third start, but it wasn’t a factor otherwise and he finished the season with eight consecutive 19th-place finishes or worse.
Gibbs’ character will be much more competitive going into his first full season in the Cup Series. He will drive the No. 54 team for JGR, which used to be the No. 18 team for Kyle Busch before his move this offseason to Richard Childress Racing.
Gibbs may be the only Cup Series driver with a better-than-average chance of winning his first career race in 2023. He will be in the best equipment of one of the most prominent organizations in the sport, and the list of winners has been severely reduced since the start of last season.
Few non-winning drivers outside of Ty Gibbs will be with teams able to regularly compete for victory in 2023
Fellow 1st year Cup Series driver Noah Gragson He would drive the No. 42 Petty GMS Racing car. Gragson was runner-up to Gibbs in the Xfinity Series last season, but Petty GMS is about to embark on just its second year of Cup Series competition. It’s possible that both Gragson and his team still have some growing to do before hitting Victory Lane.
Harrison Burton and Todd Gilliland, two rookies from 2022, will likely need a super-track or road race for their first victories. Only the first five of their rookie campaigns were at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course when Burton finished third and Gilliland followed in fourth.
The only other drivers left without a win are Ty Dillon, Corey LaJoie, and Cody Ware. Dillon and LaJoie will be colleagues at Spire Motorsports While Dillon is moving on from Petty GMS, Ware will continue to drive for his family-owned team.
LaJoie had the only fifth place finish of the 2022 season for that group when he finished fifth in March during the first superspeedway-style race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He also nearly won the July race in Atlanta before a crash in a late race, but the blistering pace is likely to be this group’s only chance of victory in 2023.
If Gibbs doesn’t go to Victory Lane next season, the Cup Series could go from a record number of new winners to nothing at all after just one year.