FYI: All remaining Xfinity and Truck tickets on NASCAR Fan Rewards for 2025 races are on discount.
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Xfinity races normally are 3000 points, they are currently 2500.

Trucks are normally 2500, and they are currently 2000.

As they say in the infomercials, while supplies last!

Revisiting the “4th Hendrick Driver” Debate
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So 210 days ago I was fed up with the Justin Haley to the 48 rumors and decided to crunch the numbers to see how Alex Bowman stacks up historically at Hendrick. I believed (and still do) that he gets way too much hate for what he has done with these cars. So I set off and posed the question to Reddit asking who everyone thought the “4th Driver” was through Hendrick history and was going to show trends and averages in comparison. Then.....I got super burnt out and forgot about the project entirely until today. So I revisited it and finally finished logging the stats for the 2024 season and crunching the numbers.

Hypothesis:
Alex Bowman is the best 4th Driver in Hendrick History.

Set Up:
1. I collected the data (Starts, Wins, Top 5s, Top 10s, DNFs, Laps Led, Avg Finish, Avg Start, Poles, Points Finish) for all 4 full time Hendrick cars from 2004 (the first year of the playoffs) until present day (at the time was 2024 so now it ends at the 2024 season).
2. I used the opinions of Reddit and my own eyes to determine who the “4th car” was every year and also who the worst performing car was every year
3. I calculated the averages for both 4th car and worst car with and without Bowman included
4. I calculated Bowman’s career averages overall, in the 4th car, and not in the 4th car
5. Did a WHOLE lot of comparisons of data
6. Boiled down all these numbers to find Alex Bowman’s stats in the 4th car and as the worst driver (Happens to be the same 4 years 2021-2024) and compare them to the season averages of all who came before him in each category

Findings:
When comparing just the data with and without Bowman included for the 4th Hendrick Car 7 categories get better (Wins, Top5s, Top 10s, DNFs, Avg Finish, Avg Start, Points Finish) with only 3 beings worse (Starts, Laps Led, Poles). Doing the same for the worst car each year the results are identical except for with Bowman included the number of poles is better.
When comparing Bowman’s stats over the averages the results basically match the findings of the categories prior.
Stats Format: (Vs 4th Car / Vs Worst Car)
- Less starts (-4.86% / -1.47%)
- Exponentially more wins (+183.02% / +219.15%)
- More Top 5s (+47.78% / +50%)
- More Top 10s (+39.17% / +44.28%)
- Finishing more races, less DNFs (-9.79% / -13.79%)
- Fewer laps led (-29.91% / 30.47%)
- Better average finish (-13.09% / -15.12%)
- Better average start (-11.98% / -17.09%)
- Mixed bag on poles (-25% / +15.38%)
- Higher points finish (-8.5% / 24.71%)

Summary (What are these stats actually saying)
Alex Bowman has helped close the gap between the Hendrick cars to make it way harder to tell who the actual 4th driver there is. Yes he does lead less laps which is a problem but almost every other category he makes better. Why should Hendrick replace him? All 4 of their drivers are elite just unfortunately nature demands that someone has to be last of the 4. In virtually the same situation, Alex Bowman is outperforming Hall of Famers and Future Hall of Famers season after season and he’s been injured twice!! The hate is unmerited at this point. No driver is perfect and in terms of available free agents no one is in Bowman’s league. If Hendrick lets him go that would be a huge mistake on their part and they should consider giving him better equipment. This study doesn’t even factor pit crews and crew chiefs which he always gets the short end of the stick on as well. Alex Bowman is a top 10 driver currently and is trending towards being another all time great Hendrick Driver.

TLDR: Alex Bowman is the best 4th Hendrick driver in history and is a top 10 driver in the cup series.

nine races into the year, who are the biggest surprises and disappointments for you this year so far?
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For me, my overall biggest surprise is Kaulig. I certainly did not expect them to be a fringe playoff contender in the Cup series with AJ, and certainly didn't expect that with two rookie drivers, especially not Daniel Dye, in Xfinity. Daniel has 4 top 10s this year so far and is 13th in points.

Ryan Sieg is also currently working on his statistical best season right now. He's running up front, he's contending for wins, he's a factor the whole time. I can't say this is a huge surprise though, given that he has been trending upwards for a long time.

and, of course, Brennan Poole is giving Alpha Prime their best run ever. I would not be surprised to see him sneak in a win.

But the absolute biggest surprise this year so far to me has been Ryan Preece. The guy has speed, he's been leading laps, he's been getting stage points, I would not be surprised to see him point his way into the playoffs with how elite he has been looking. He's not quite a championship threat, but long shot deep playoff run looks in the cards for him if his performance keeps improving throughout the year.

My biggest disappointment in the cup series I could argue is Riley Herbst, but he's not wrecking cars as much as he's just slow as molasses. I did say he would probably struggle the first half of the year though and maybe come alive a little bit in the second half. not competing for wins or anything, but certainly starting to compete for top 10s and maybe a top five, but still not making a good case for keeping that ride long term unfortunately, and I do like Riley.

I could also argue that a few of the current Xfinity prospects are definitely underperforming, especially William Sawalich. like, I didn't expect him to be as good as Jesse Love or anything, but I certainly did not expect him to be the second coming of Kevin Conway if we're talking about abysmal JGR performance.

You could also make a very good case for SVG as being one of the biggest disappointments, but did anybody really expect him to do well on the ovals? he didn't start competing for top 15s on them regularly until the end of the Xfinity season last year.

but I think ultimately there's only one driver I can say has been a horrible disappointment so far this year, and that's Brad Keselowski. Ironic that everybody thought Denny would be washed this year and it ends up being Brad instead. I don't see him looking like he has one foot out the door yet, but I would not be at all shocked to hear him announce his retirement this year. He's just off, and the entire remainder of the team has been pretty fast. It's not very Brad to finish multiple laps down on speed. I do hope he can sneak in a victory, because based on the way things look right now, it might be his last :(

Has NASCAR gotten it selves into a hole?
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Obviously a lot of people don’t like the Next Gen and the FOX broadcast this year has been atrocious while The CW for the Xfinity Series has been Mosley positive from the fans

Why do you think NASCAR isn’t doing well, could it be the fact that you need FOX, FS1, Amazon Prime, TNT, The CW, NBC, and USA Network to watch the races?

105% Rule
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i was rewatching the 2012 indy 500 when i seen the lotus powered machines be disqualified for not making 105%. so i have a question, has this ever happened since, and how many laps does a car have to make 105%?

2025 LASTCAR Xfinity and Truck Playoff Standings (After Rockingham
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Xfinity Playoff standings (Race 10/26)

1) Kris Wright 1 Loss 320 (7 PP)

2) William Sawalich 1 Loss 255 (7 PP)

3) Anthony Alfredo 1 Loss 246 (6 PP)

4) Dean Thompson 1 Loss 188 (8 PP)

5) Christian Eckes 1 Loss 182 (7 PP)

6) Mason Maggio 1 Loss 182 (7 PP)

7) Taylor Gray 1 Loss 173 (5 PP)

8) Daniel Dye 1 Loss 152 (7 PP)

9) Greg Van Alst 301

10) Garrett Smithley 286

11) Kyle Sieg 282

12) Ryan Ellis 273

13) Blaine Perkins 235

14) Matt DiBenedetto 225

15) Brennan Poole 194

16) Nick Sanchez 186

17) Sheldon Creed 181

18) Josh Williams 174

19) Jeremy Clements 170

20) Josh Bilicki 169

21) Parker Retzlaff 148

22) Jeb Burton 148

23) Mason Massey 145

24) Joey Gase 145

25) Connor Zilisch 144

26) Thomas Annunziata 141 (1 PP)

27) Brandon Jones 137

28) Harrison Burton 137

29) Jesse Love 132

30) Leland Honeyman 132

Other Losers that most likely won't make multiple starts in the playoffs

34) Justin Bonsignore 1 Loss 121 (7 PP)

46) Carson Hocevar 1 Loss 60 (7 PP)

___________________________

Truck series Playoff Standings (race 7/18)

1) Stephen Mallozzi 3 Losses 235 (21 PP)

2) Norm Benning 1 Loss 188 (8 PP)

3) Keith McGee 1 Loss 104 (6 PP)

4) Parker Kligerman 1 Loss 101 (7 PP)

5) Nathan Byrd 255

6) Frankie Muniz 235

7) Spencer Boyd 224

8) Toni Briedinger 228 (1 PP)

9) Connor Mosack 186

10) Matt Crafton 173

11) Matt Mills 167

12) Justin Carroll 163

13) Jack Wood 156

14) Dawson Sutton 155

15) Ben Rhodes 155

16) Tanner Gray 138

17) Andres Perez de Lara 137

18) Kaden Honeycutt 134

19) Ty Majeski 131

20) Corey Day 129

21) Stewart Friesen 128

22) Rajah Caruth 123

23) Luke Fenhaus 122

24) Gio Ruggerio 108

25) Bayley Currey 105

26) Josh Reaume 98

27) Cody Dennison 90

28) Layne Riggs 90

29) William Sawalich 87

30) Grant Enfinger 85

Other Losers that most likely won't make multiple starts in the playoffs

38) Ryan Roulette 1 Loss 57 (5 PP)

Awful ideas
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What if the hood was like a led screen that could change so multiple sponsors could be on car?

What's your terrible idea.

is anyone else worried about the current Business model?
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all the equity firms are coming into the sport and owning teams, which is a TERRIBLE business idea in the first place since teams don't turn a profit, and we've seen this movie before: Rob Kauffman bailed out MWR and how'd that work out? George Gillett and company got involved with Evernham and what is that team up to these days? i'm just worried these Trillion-Dollar companies are going to show up, and either price-out sponsors or kick-out sponsors and then leave in 10 years. if it was the least-bit sustainable wouldn't Celesta Capital own Trackhouse?