NASCAR Year In Review: Top 23 stories for 2023

The NASCAR season ended more than a month ago, and news continues to come for what 2024 has in store.

But before looking ahead, here’s a look back at the top 23 stories of the 2023 season. I based this on overall interest and the chatter these events/storylines generated. I swear no egg nog was consumed while making this list, even if some might think so depending on where things are ranked.

23. Ben Rhodes Wins Second Truck Title

It wasn’t a truck series championship race for the ages as it was filled with controversial retaliation and several wrecks near the end. As the dust settled, ThorSport Racing’s Ben Rhodes won his second truck title in the last three years. Rhodes will return to defend his title in 2024.

22. Cole Custer Wins Xfinity Title

After struggling for three seasons in Cup, Cole Custer found himself back in the Xfinity Series for a full season at Stewart-Haas Racing. Everything certainly didn’t go as planned as the team wasn’t as fast as hoped for much of the season, but they brought the speed when it mattered, and Custer captured the title. Custer will return to defend his title in 2024.

21. See You In Iowa 

Iowa Speedway was added to the 2024 schedule, the first time the NASCAR Cup Series will visit the seven-eighths mile oval. The track will replace California Speedway, which is being shut down while NASCAR continues to plan for a reconfigured facility from a 2-mile oval to a short track. In another schedule change, NASCAR will run the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval instead of the road course next year.

20. Are You Ready For Rookies?

Three drivers signed contracts for their first full season in Cup. Josh Berry will replace Kevin Harvick at Stewart-Haas Racing, Carson Hocevar will replace Ty Dillon at Spire Motorsports and Zane Smith will race a third Cup car for Spire while on loan from Trackhouse Racing. There will be one “return to Cup” with John Hunter Nemechek, who spent the last three years primarily running in trucks and Xfinity, replacing Noah Gragson at Legacy.

19. Alex Bowman Injured

Bowman was having a great season until he broke his back in a sprint-car accident in April. He missed three points races and the all-star race but was never really the same after that. Missing the races coupled with a 60-point penalty early in the season was too much for him to overcome to make the playoffs.

19. Two F1 Champs Race

Jenson Button, the 2009 Formula 1 champion, drove in three races for Rick Ware Racing through a partnership with Stewart-Haas Racing. In the race at COTA, he was joined by Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 champion, giving the race two former F1 champions as Raikkonen drove a third Trackhouse car. Added in there was IMSA sports-car ace Jordan Taylor, who was racing for the injured Chase Elliott.

18. Bell Surges For JGR

Christopher Bell was the only JGR driver to make the Championship 4, where a brake rotor failure ended his championship hopes early at Phoenix. He won two races during the season and continued to show promise of being the long-term future of the organization.

17. 23XI Racing Top-10s

In just its third year, 23XI Racing put both of its drivers in the top 10 in points as Tyler Reddick won two races and finished sixth in the standings; Bubba Wallace went winless and finished 10th. Four organizations had two drivers in the top 10 in points: Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing, RFK Racing and 23XI. Team Penske and Trackhouse each had one.

16. RFK Racing Emergence

RFK being on that list of two drivers to make the top 10 in points might have been even a bigger surprise than 23XI as the organization made an argument as the best overall Ford organization during the summer. Chris Buescher won three times and finished seventh in the standings and Brad Keselowski was winless and finished eighth. The fact they both made the playoffs after being shut out a year earlier was quite impressive. Buescher had won two races in the first 278 races of his career. In the last 15 races of 2023, he won three.

15. Kyle Busch: New Team, Revived Career

Kyle Busch had won just three times in the previous two years at Joe Gibbs Racing. So the fact he won in his second race while at Richard Childress Racing — it was the final race at the 2-mile California Speedway (NASCAR hopes to reconfigure it) — and won a total of three for the season showed it was a pretty good move.

14. Martin Truex Jr. A Yes For 2024

Truex didn’t make a decision until early August, but he decided that he would race at least one more year at Joe Gibbs Racing. After missing the playoffs in 2022, he won three times and captured the regular-season title in 2023. The playoffs left much to be desired. Whether 2024 is his final season is still to be determined … and likely not determined until, once again, the summer.

13. Ross Chastain Good And Bad

Chastain has been a polarizing driver for his aggressiveness and arguably lack of awareness of when is the right time to show that aggressiveness. It drew the ire of other drivers, including a fight with Noah Gragson. After a couple of wrecks with Kyle Larson, Chastain received harsh words from not just Larson’s team owner Rick Hendrick, but his own boss as well. Justin Marks knew that a driver can’t throw away opportunities in fast cars because they won’t always be fast. That proved true as Trackhouse seemed to have a lull throughout the summer before surging late, including Chastain’s victory in the season finale at Phoenix.

12. Daytona 500

The Daytona 500 kicked off the season with a field few could have predicted. Jimmie Johnson made his return to NASCAR Cup Series racing after spending two years in IndyCar. Travis Pastrana made a bucket list start in the iconic race. And in the end, it was a driver who earned the biggest win in his career and the biggest victory ever for his single-car team as Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won just the second race in JTG Daugherty Racing history.

11. Hendrick Success And Influence

William Byron won an impressive six times — the most in the series — and Kyle Larson won four times (plus the all-star race) to give Hendrick Motorsports a very successful season. Both drivers made it to the Championship 4 but neither captured the title. It was that kind of roller-coaster year for Hendrick, which also found itself mired in the crosshairs of NASCAR inspectors early in the year. As a result of some of the questions over the Hendrick penalties and decisions by the appeals panel, NASCAR became more transparent in showing parts and pieces found in violation of the rules and also had its appeals panel issuing a one-sentence or two-sentence statement on how it came to its decision.

10. North Wilkesboro Returns

For the first time since 1996, North Wilkesboro was on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule. It played host to the all-star race, and while Larson ran away with the victory, the event had an incredible throwback vibe. The old surface held up for one final weekend — it was recently repaved for the return of the all-star race in 2024.

9. TV Deal Done

NASCAR completed its next broadcasting deal as it came to agreements for the 2025-2031 seasons. FOX Sports will have the first 14 Cup events plus the entire Craftsman Truck Series; Amazon Prime will have Cup events 15-19 on the schedule; TNT will have the Cup events 20-24 on the schedule and NBC Sports will have the final 14 events. The CW will have the entire Xfinity Series. Now that the broadcasting deal is done, NASCAR needs to get an extension done with the teams on the charter agreements, which expire after the 2024 season.

8. Ryan Preece Daytona Flip

Preece was involved in the most wild accident of the season as he flipped several times, including multiple rotations in the air without hitting the ground, in Daytona. He was not injured, although he did have bloodshot eyes for a couple of weeks. Daytona has paved part of the grass area where his car got airborne.

7. Kevin Harvick’s Final Year

Harvick didn’t win a race in his final season and got knocked out of playoff contention in the opening round. But if you asked him if it was a successful final year, he’d probably say it was in the sense that the fans had plenty of opportunity to celebrate his 60-win career. He’ll still be coming to the track — he’ll be in the FOX Sports broadcast booth as an analyst for Cup telecasts.

6. Noah Gragson Saga

Gragson had high hopes for his rookie season, but he struggled on the track along with Legacy Motor Club as a whole over the first half of the season. The frustration boiled over at Kansas when he got into a fight with Ross Chastain. He was suspended and released in August after liking a racially insensitive meme. He was reinstated two months later and recently signed with Stewart-Haas Racing. 

5. Denny Hamlin The Villain 

Hamlin enjoyed playing the role of the heel as he spoke his mind on his new podcast and embraced the boos at driver introductions — and when he won races. He proclaimed “I beat your favorite driver” after a win in the Bristol night race.

4. Cars Are Safer

While a couple of drivers did suffer concussion-type symptoms — Gragson and Ryan Blaney among them — after accidents, drivers seemed to be absorbing less energy in rear impacts, indicating NASCAR’s changes to the Cup cars prior to the season helped. NASCAR also made a midseason change after a vicious wreck at Talladega where the front of Ryan Preece’s car crushed the passenger side of Kyle Larson’s car to the point where the front of his car nearly reached Larson.

3. Penske Back-to-Back Champs

Team Penske won the Cup title for the second consecutive season as Ryan Blaney used a rally over the last couple of months to capture his first career Cup title. He finished first or second in four of the last six races, including wins at Talladega and Martinsville and then a second-place finish at Phoenix to seal the crown.

2. Chase Elliott Woes

Elliott broke his left leg in March and missed six races early in the season, putting him behind for much of the year and likely impacting the number of people who watched from home with the sport’s most popular driver sidelined. He then was suspended for a race at Gateway for turning Hamlin in retaliation at Charlotte. He didn’t win a race, so he missed the playoffs as he couldn’t overcome pretty much eight races without points (he finished 34th at Charlotte). 

1. Chicago Streets and SVG

NASCAR took a huge gamble to stage its first-ever street race as it took over the streets of Chicago. Amid questions from those in the city and local businesses on whether this was the right place for a NASCAR race, the event had a lot of buzz — until a historic rainfall drenched the vibe for the weekend. NASCAR did get the race in late Sunday afternoon — and it was a great race for a surprising enthusiastic, soggy crowd — with a stunning finish as New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen won in his Cup debut. The experience led to van Gisbergen, a three-time Australian Supercars champion, signing a deal with Trackhouse Racing ,and he will drive a full Xfinity season in a Kaulig Racing car in 2024.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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