NASCAR 2021: A look at next year’s lineup,
Teams to beat and an early look at next year’s lineup
NASCAR’S silly season has nearly reached its end. Only a handful of rides remain open for 2021 and just a few Cup drivers have not announced their plans for next season, but lineups largely remain in place as teams look ahead to the Daytona 500 in February.
Below is a summary of who’s staying, who’s leaving and how teams should stack up next season.
NASCAR teams to beat
NASCAR TEAMS TO BEAT Lineups are set for the powerhouse teams of Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Penske, Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-haas Racing, with the four-car teams of Hendrick, Gibbs and SHR each replacing drivers next year.
Team Penske will see the return of its three drivers — Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano — after a crew chief rearrangement that contributed to a successful 2020 campaign. Logano and Keselowski both raced for a title in this year’s Championship 4. It will be up to Blaney, who signed a multi-year extension with the team earlier this year, to get there next season. Team owner Roger Penske called Blaney a “championship-caliber driver” in March, but with one win and an early postseason exit in 2020, more hinges on the upcoming season for the 26-year-old driver to stake his claim in the championship conversation.
Of the teams losing a driver, Hendrick and its addition of Kyle Larson is expected to manifest wins the quickest. While HMS is losing seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson to a part-time Indycar schedule next season, it’s adding Larson — who had one win and eight top-fives in 2019. Larson is back in NASCAR for 2021 after a six-month suspension for using a racial slur in the spring. He will race the No. 5 Chevy and joins a stacked HMS roster that includes reigning Cup champion Chase Elliott, as well as 2020 playoff drivers Alex Bowman and William Byron.
“It’s clear that the iteration of Chase Elliott that won a Cup Series championship won’t be the best version of Elliott we’ll ever see,” David Smith of Motorsports Analytics wrote this week.
That’s a promising sign for Hendrick Motorsports. And for everyone else?
“That alone should terrify opposing teams for years to come,” Smith wrote.
A 2021 reset for Toyota, JGR
As Hendrick rides the championship wave, JGR will be looking to bounce back after the team largely underperformed this year despite Denny Hamlin’s seven wins and appearance in the title race. Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. each won only one race this season. In 2019, Busch won five races and the series championship. Truex Jr. won seven races that year.
Those three drivers — Hamlin, Truex Jr. and Busch — were also the only three Toyota drivers to win a race in 2020, while five different Ford drivers and five Chevrolet drivers won at least once. President of Toyota Racing Development David Wilson called the manufacturer’s performance in October “unacceptable.”
JGR and Toyota are looking to their next No. 20 driver Christopher Bell and a few crew chief changes to ignite a spark in 2021. Bell could be the breakout star of the series next year, as could Bubba Wallace, who will also drive a Camry. Bell, a rookie
this year, is working with Busch’s former, championship-winning crew chief Adam Stevens, and they’ll be a duo to watch.
Experience split at Stewart-haas
Finally, Stewart-haas Racing is expected to field a lineup that’s split between Cup experience. Kevin Harvick will remain with SHR through 2023 and could dominate the regular season again in the era of limited practice. Aric Almirola, another veteran of the series, will return to the No. 10.
Then it gets interesting with three young drivers in the pipeline: Cole Custer, 22, will be back in the No. 41 next season, racing alongside Cup rookie Chase Briscoe, 25, who is replacing Clint Bowyer in the No. 14. Briscoe excelled in the Xfinity Series this year, but he’s an enigma in Cup. SHR also recently announced 21-year-old Riley Herbst as its next Xfinity driver to replace Briscoe, indicating the team’s desire to build for the future. While those drivers might not roll off wins right away in ‘21, give SHR a few more years and then the team could be looking more like Hendrick is now.
New teams in th ecup series
Multiple ownership groups are joining NASCAR next year, including Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Racing (Bubba Wallace as the driver), Justin Marks’ Trackhouse Racing (Daniel Suarez) and Matt Tifft and B.J. Mcleod’s Live Fast Motorsports (Mcleod).
Spire Motorsports is also fielding a second Cup entry driven by Corey Lajoie after purchasing the charter formerly owned by Leavine Family Racing. The new entries introduce some unknowns into the series, and add teams for each manufacturer — 23XI for Toyota, Trackhouse for Chevrolet and Live Fast Motorsports for Ford.
While smaller teams typically don’t run as well as the larger ones, 23XI Racing certainly has the makings to be an eventual powerhouse with a celebrity investor in Jordan, a rising star driver in Bubba Wallace, significant sponsorship interest and a working relationship with JGR. Still, it’s the first year for the team and there will inevitably be firstyear wrinkles.
Faces returning to the cup series
On the driver side, only Briscoe and Ross Chastain, who is driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, are the rookies announced so far. Chastain will join 2020 playoff driver Kurt Busch at CGR next season.
Other two-car teams are sticking with their lineups from last season: Richard Childress Racing (Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick), Roush Fenway Racing (Ryan Newman and Chris Buescher) and JTG Daugherty (Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Ryan Preece expected to return) should look the same next year from a driver standpoint before Next Gen arrives in 2022.
Matt Dibenedetto will return to work with the Wood Brothers in ‘21 while Erik Jones will start his contract with Richard Petty Motorsports. Then there’s Ty Dillon, who has not announced his plans for 2021 but is a free agent after the sale of Germain Racing’s charter.
Cup rides remain open where Dillon could land, however. Front Row Motorsports has not named its next driver for the No. 38 to replace John Hunter Nemechek, who will drive full-time in the Truck Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports next season. Go Fas Racing, Gaunt Brothers Racing, Rick Ware Racing and Spire also still have openings.
While much is set for next season, there is still more to come.