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Let’s face it, every manager has something to prove in one form or another.
Here are five standouts entering the 2025 NASCAR Cup season and what they could accomplish this year.
Alex Bowman
He made the last eight in the Cup playoffs in 2020 and followed that up by winning a career-high four races in 2021.
But Bowman hasn’t been able to duplicate those successes since.
He missed five playoff races with a concussion after a crash at Texas in 2022.
Bowman led the points early in the 2023 season, but suffered a broken vertebra in a sprint car crash that April and missed three Cup points races. He had only four top-10s in 23 Cup races after returning.
Bowman narrowly made it to the last eight last year – until his car failed post-race inspection at the Charlotte Roval and was disqualified. This allowed Joey Logano to secure the final playoff spot en route to winning the title.
Bowman ends 80-run drought, Grant Park 165 win
Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick share their thoughts following the NASCAR Cup Series Grant Park 165 at the Chicago Street Course.
The 31-year-old Bowman was often considered the “other driver” at Hendrick Motorsports to teammates Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and William Byron. Elliott and Larson each won a Cup Championship. Byron won last year’s Daytona 500.
This season is Bowman’s chance to put the disappointments of the past three seasons behind him and start a new chapter in his Cup career.
Chris Buescher
It was a decade ago that Buescher won the Xfinity Championship.
He’s made full-time runs in the Cup since then, but he hasn’t had a playoff-caliber drive until recently. He has five wins in the past three seasons, including two playoff wins.
As RFK Racing grows, the focus is on making the playoffs and competing for wins. Buescher made the playoffs in 2023, but not last year.
Since 2022, Buescher has achieved nearly two-thirds of his 42 top-10s at either road courses or courses 1 mile or less in length.
The key for Buescher and RFK Racing will be 1.5 mile tracks. With the exception of Atlanta, which is categorized as a setup track, five of the first 13 races of the regular season are at 1.5-mile speedways: Las Vegas, Homestead, Texas, Kansas and Charlotte.
Larson was thrilled by the win, Buescher was anguished by the loss
Steve Letarte and Jeff Burton analyze an “incredible” photo finish at Kansas for Kyle Larson, yet “heartbreaking” for Chris Buescher, how the winner is determined in NASCAR, what led to such a close conclusion, and more.
Buescher has no wins and three top 10s in 21 combined starts at those tracks since the 2022 season. Teammate Brad Keselowski had seven top 10s at such tracks in the same time.
Buescher nearly won at Kansas last May, finishing second to Kyle Larson by 0.001 seconds in the closest finish in series history.
Greater success at 1.5-mile tracks, along with his power on short tracks, road courses and Darlington Raceway (three top-10s in the last four starts there), should bring Buescher back to the playoffs this season.
Daniel Suarez
Coming off a season where Suarez made the playoffs and Trackhouse Racing teammate Ross Chastain did not, it might not make sense that Suarez has more to prove than Chastain.
While Suarez did make the playoffs with his dramatic victory in Atlanta last year, he has seen his number of top-10 finishes decrease each of the past two seasons. Suarez had a career-best 13 top 10s in 2022. That total dropped to 10 in 2023 and nine last year.
Suarez comes out on top after epic finish
Marty Snider, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte review Daniel Suarez’s Atlanta win in an instant classic after a three-wide race against Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch that resulted in the 3rd closest margin of victory since 1993.
A key area last season was average starting position. Suarez’s average starting place last year was 20.7 – four positions worse than the 2023 season.
So what?
Last year he scored 29 points in the first stage – half of what he scored in the opening stages of races in 2023.
Bottom line, if one doesn’t qualify well, they don’t typically run near the front because of all the traffic. And if they come out on top, it may be the result of a brutal strategy that happens to work that particular time versus all the other times it doesn’t.
There will be a lot of focus on Suarez – who has made the playoffs in two of the last three years – when the series heads to his native Mexico to compete in June. The question will be whether by then he has secured a spot in the playoffs and can be seen as someone who can contend or will try to push his way into the postseason.
Bubba Wallace
While Wallace has shown progress in recent years, he has just one playoff game and no regular-season wins (both of his bowl wins came in the playoffs in years he didn’t make the postseason).
23XI Racing teammate Tyler Reddick made the championship race last year, the first time the organization has done so.
Last night of the offseason. Pre-season work starts tomorrow, kicking it off with a fun trip around the @Columbia1938 fam!
Excited for this season to get going. Took it upon myself to be better and do better. Kicked my ass the last 2 seasons, plain and simple.
— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) January 6, 2025
Wallace begins this season with Charles Denike as his new crew chief and a focus on getting off to a good start, something that has hampered Wallace in recent seasons.
Wallace averaged 4.6 fewer points per event in the first 12 races of the season compared to the remaining 14 races in the regular season over the past three years.
If he matched his productivity in the last 14 races of the regular season during the first 12 races, he would have scored 55 additional points. He would have made the playoffs last year with those extra points.
Wallace had eight top-10s in the final 16 races of last season, including four top-10s in the playoffs. He averaged 28.3 points during those races – the equivalent of ninth place.
If he can build on that this season, he should be on his way to making the playoffs again.
Todd Gilliland
He is the most experienced Cup driver at Front Row Motorsports, but also the youngest in the three-car team that includes Noah Gragson and Zane Smith.
Gilliland, who is 24 years old, has made 108 career Bowl starts. He begins his fourth full-time season in the series. Gragson has 75 Cup starts; Smith is 45.
Almost 60% of the races Gilliland had better year-over-year results (2024 compared to 2023) were on short courses and 1.5 mile courses. It’s a sign of the progress Front Row Motorsports and Gilliland have made.
Every year is an opportunity to move forward and that is the case for Gilliland.
This will be his third season with team principal Ryan Bergenty. They had a rough start to last season, recording three top-20 finishes in the first 11 races of the year. They followed by recording nine consecutive top-20s, including three top-10s.
Building on that consistency will be key for this team. Do this and the no. 38 team could be in position to give Front Row Motorsports its third playoff appearance in the past five seasons.
