The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, by the numbers

Yesterday at 01:38 PM

A week on from the conclusion of the 2024 season, it's time to take stock of how the year unfolded.

The columns and recaps have been written about Team Penske’s Joey Logano winning his third NASCAR Cup Series championship. There will be a chance for drivers to offer any final thoughts about their season and early previews of next later this week during the awards ceremony.

In the meantime, the numbers have been tabulated. Once the year has been completed, it's always interesting to see how things played out. Some categories are straightforward to follow throughout the season, such as wins and top finishes. But there is also loop data that helps show how well a driver did.

Wins

Kyle Larson led the series with six victories. Joey Logano had the second-most at four (three of which came in the last 10 races).

Stage wins

Kyle Larson had a series-leading 12 stage wins. Christopher Bell was his closest competition, with 11 stage wins.

Top 20 finishes

Christopher Bell had a series-leading 23 top-20 finishes in 36 races.

Top five finishes

Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson led the series with 15 top-five finishes each.

Poles

Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports used Roush Yates Engines to their advantage to claim a series-leading six pole wins. All but one of them, St. Louis, was on a superspeedway. Kyle Larson had the second-most pole wins at five.

Laps led

Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell were the only two drivers who led more than 1,000 laps in the Cup Series this year. Larson led the series with 1,699 laps led, while Bell had 1,131.

The next drivers in line? Denny Hamlin, with 943 laps led, and Tyler Reddick with 597.

Joey Logano

A third championship for Logano came after he started from the No. 9 seed. No, it is not the lowest a driver has been seeded and won the championship. That honor belongs to Logano's teammate, Ryan Blaney, who did so from the No. 12 seed in 2023.

Average finish

Chase Elliott and the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team had a solid season with a victory and postseason appearance while leading the series with an 11.7 overall average finish.

Lead lap finishes

Chase Elliott was also at the top of this category. Elliott had 32 lead lap finishes in 36 races. Denny Hamlin was second in line with 30 in 36 races.

Speeding

On his way out the door, Martin Truex Jr. did one thing better than everyone else: speed. Truex had eight speeding penalties this year. All of the non-point events (Daytona qualifying races, All-Star Open, All-Star Race) were included in the tally tracking.

Zane Smith and Daniel Hemric had the second most speeding penalties at seven.

Regular season winners

There were 14 different winners through the first 26 races. In the elimination era, that is the third time there were 14 different winners before the postseason. The most in a season was 16 in 2022.

Overall different winners

In 2024, there were 17 different winners, beginning with William Byron, followed by Daniel Suarez, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Austin Dillon, Harrison Burton, Chase Briscoe, Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Loop data

There are always some interesting statistical nuggets in the year-ending loop data book, such as:

* Christopher Bell was the best closer, which is average finish, average spots gained, and positions moved up. Bell had an average finish of 12.1 with 3.2 average spots gained, and 112 positions moved up.

* Kyle Larson had the highest driver rating at 101.2. This category combines wins, finishes, top 15 finishes, average running position while on the lead lap, average speed under green, fastest lap, led most laps and lead lap finish.

* William Byron was the fastest driver early in a run. Byron's average rank was 7.935 over Kyle Larson, whose average rank was 9.069.

* Ryan Blaney was the fastest driver late in a run. Blaney's average rank was 7.148.

* Ryan Blaney was the fastest on restarts with an average rank of 12.571. Christopher Bell was second in the category at 12.667.

* Denny Hamlin had the most laps run in the top 15 at 7,565. Kyle Larson was second at 7,332.

* Kyle Larson was the miles leader on the season at 1,794.71. Christopher Bell was second at 1,403.43.

* Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott tied for the best driver in the percentage of laps run on the lead lap at 93.84%, which was 9,140 laps out of a total 9,686 laps.

Martin Truex Jr.

In a nod to his full-time career ending, it's worth zooming out and looking at his numbers in totality. His resume in the Cup Series will make Truex a first-ballot NASCAR Hall of Famer with 693 starts and 34 wins, plus the 2017 championship. He also had 147 top-five finishes, 291 top-10 finishes, and 25 poles. And then there were the 12,747 laps led.

Among the wins for Truex were two of the four crown jewel events: the Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. Unfortunately, he was on the losing end of the closest finish in Daytona 500 history with Denny Hamlin in 2016 at 0.01s.

Of the tracks on the Cup Series schedule that Truex made starts at, he won at all but 16 of them. And keep in mind, some of those facilities he made less than 10 starts on, like the Daytona road course, Road America, and Iowa.

There was also his brief but impressive Xfinity Series career. Although Truex made 104 career starts, he ran just two full seasons. In both of those seasons, he won the championship (2004-2005). Truex won 12 races in those two seasons before adding one more in 2006 to bring his career total to 13.