While the spotlight has shone on a select few drivers in the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series season, there are several other drivers who are poised to make under-the-radar championship runs.
A lot of the hype through the first 20 races of the 36-race 2019 NASCAR Cup Series season has been on a few drivers, four to be exact. While there really hasn’t been a true “Big 3” or “Big 4” emerge like in the past, four of the sport’s 31 full-time drivers have spent the bulk of the time in the spotlight.
Defending champion Joey Logano of Team Penske leads the championship standings and has earned two victories. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr., two drivers who joined Logano in last year’s Championship 4, co-lead the Cup Series in victories with four each. Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski has earned three victories of his own.
These four drivers, who have made a combined six Championship 4 appearances in the last two seasons, have combined to win 13 of the season’s first 20 races, and they have combined to lead more than half of the laps in these 20 races (2,876 of 5,721).
But there have been several other drivers having productive seasons without taking up too much of the spotlight, and there is almost always an upset or two come playoff time, particularly when it comes to determining which four drivers will compete in the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway in mid-November.
Here are five drivers who are poised to make low-key championship runs.
Denny Hamlin
Denny Hamlin has been living in the shadows of teammates Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. at Joe Gibbs Racing this season, with those two drivers each having already secured a season-high four victories.
But Hamlin himself has had quite a productive year. He has earned two victories, including his second career Daytona 500 victory to open up the season at Daytona International Speedway, and he sits in fourth place in the championship standings. He has actually scored more overall points and more stage points than Truex Jr. has so far this year.
He has methodically put himself in a position where he has arguably the best chance to win a championship in his Cup Series career, and what he did in this past Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway proves it.
Hamlin had a chance to move Kevin Harvick out of the way on the final lap to win this race. He gave him a shove, but not interested in making enemies, he didn’t pull a Chase Elliott-style “wreck ’em” move like he did at Martinsville Speedway in the round of 8 in the 2017 season.
Two years ago, he might have, and two years ago when he did, he cost himself a chance at winning the championship.
Hamlin ultimately didn’t even win that race at Martinsville Speedway, and he was in a position to advance to the Championship 4 in the round of 8 finale at ISM Raceway before Elliott got retaliation by pushing the #11 Toyota into the wall, causing a tire to go down that ultimately sent Hamlin into the wall a few laps later, ending his race and his championship aspirations.
Hamlin was already locked into this season’s playoffs while Harvick wasn’t. Aside of five additional playoff points, which really won’t mean much if Harvick decides to get revenge at the right time — which, if he says he will, he will — what would Hamlin have gained by wrecking him?
To put it in the words of his teammate, Hamlin is more interested in winning the war than an individual battle at this point, and he has given himself the best chance to do so.
Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick as a “low-key” championship contender in any other season but this one might be considered ridiculous, but through the first 20 races of this year, he fits the bill to a T.
It took Harvick until the season’s 20th race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to finally secure not only his but Stewart-Haas Racing’s first victory of the season, and this victory was his first top three finish of the season as well. He had never previously gone past a season’s ninth race without recording at least one top three finish.
Only twice in Cup Series history (Ned Jarrett in 1961 and Tony Stewart in 2011) has a driver won the championship without winning any one of the season’s first 19 races, and no driver has ever even come close to winning a championship without recording a single top three finish in the season’s first 19 races.
The 43-year-old Bakersfield, California native has as good a chance as anybody to change that. Even with only one top three finish in the season’s first 20 races, he sits in an impressive third place in the championship standings, and his laps led total of 482 trails only the totals of the four drivers discussed in the first slide of this article.
Additionally, Harvick has been in the Championship 4 four times since its introduction in the 2014 season, and he won the 2014 championship. He has finished in the top three in the championship standings in five of the last six and seven of the last nine seasons.
While he hasn’t dominated the headlines like he did last season by winning five of the season’s first 12 races and ending up tied for a season-high in victories with eight, Harvick is in a position to make a low-key championship run.
Kurt Busch
Kurt Busch has thrived in his first season driving for Chip Ganassi Racing. His average finish of 10.05 ranks third among all drivers, as he trails only his brother Kyle and Joey Logano, the two drivers who are pulling away from everybody else in the championship standings, in this category.
The 40-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native hasn’t won more than one race in a season since he won two races in the 2015 season, and he hasn’t won more than two races in a season since he won three races all the way back in the 2005 season.
Having already earned his maiden victory driving for Chip Ganassi Racing at Kentucky Speedway, you could say that he has met his quota for the year.
But even if he doesn’t win another race this season, he is still in a position to potentially make a deep playoff run to give himself a chance to win the championship when the Championship 4 rolls around.
Kurt has lived in younger brother Kyle’s shadow for several seasons. Despite the fact that he is nearly seven years older than Kyle and has driven on a full-time basis in the Cup Series for four more years, Kurt has managed to win 31 races while Kyle has won 55, including 31 since the 2013 season alone.
In their 15 seasons as full-time drivers together, they have recorded three 1-2 finishes. Two of these three 1-2 finishes have taken place this year after Kyle beat Kurt at Sonoma Raceway in the 2015 season.
Their first 1-2 finish of the 2019 season resulted in a victory for the Kyle at Bristol Motor Speedway back in early April, but the second one at Kentucky Speedway resulted in a Kurt victory by a mere 0.076 seconds over the 2015 champion in what was one of the most thrilling finishes in NASCAR history.
Never before had a more exuberant “Hell yeah!” been exclaimed in NASCAR before Kurt made that happen after winning this race. The 2004 champion is clearly charging hard for his second championship, and he wants everybody to know that he can win it — most importantly, before his little brother wins his.
Chase Elliott
Ordinarily, you might not consider a driver whose average finish in the last six races is 24.50 and whose top 10 finish total of seven is higher than those of only 14 of the sport’s other 30 drivers a championship contender, but Chase Elliott is another driver in a position to make a low-key title run.
Until teammate Alex Bowman won the race at Chicagoland Speedway to begin Chevrolet’s first three-race winning streak since the 2015 season, Elliott had been the only Chevrolet driver to win a race since Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon opened up the 2018 season by winning the Daytona 500, a race in which he led only the final lap.
Between Dillon’s victory and Bowman’s victory, Elliott earned four victories, which happened to be the first four victories of his Cup Series career. So the man once dubbed “Chokin’ Chase Who Can’t Win A Race” by his critics was responsible for Chevrolet’s only four wins in a 62-race span.
With Chevrolet now performing at their highest level in several years even though they are still a bit behind Toyota and Ford as a whole, now is the time for Elliott to string together another run like he put together earlier this season.
Prior to his recent cold stretch, during which four of his six poor results stemmed from issues completely out of his control, he had been on a five-race streak of top five finishes, which included his victory at Talladega Superspeedway. His average finish during this five-race span was a series-best 3.60.
Elliott has never failed to qualify for the round of 12, and he has advanced to the round of 8 in each of the past two seasons. In both of those seasons, he put himself in a position to advance to the Championship 4 until late in the round of 8 finales, both at ISM Raceway.
Even with his recent cold streak, Elliott sits in eighth place in the championship standings and seventh place in the playoff picture with the fifth highest stage point total. He is more than capable of getting the job done when it counts, something that couldn’t be said about him before he finally got the monkey off his back with his first career win last August at Watkins Glen International.
Ryan Newman
Ryan Newman’s first season driving for Roush Fenway Racing had gone largely unappreciated until his incredible come-from-behind seventh place finish in the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway that he pulled off after starting at the back of the field in a backup car and experiencing a significant engine issue in the latter stages of the race.
Of the four drivers already discussed in this article (and of the eight drivers discussed including the four referenced in the first slide), all are already locked into the playoffs.
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Newman, meanwhile, is on the playoff bubble in 15th place in the championship standings. He sits just 21 points above the playoff cut line with six races remaining in the regular season, and he sits just four points ahead of 16th place driver Clint Bowyer of Stewart-Haas Racing, which is particularly significant if somebody from outside of the top 16 manages to win one of the regular season’s six remaining races.
Newman has gotten as much as he can possibly get out of his equipment this season, and it has recently started to pay off. His average finish of 9.00 in the last five races is just 0.20 positions behind that of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Erik Jones, who leads the series in that category, and his average finish of 7.00 in the last three races is the best.
When he entered the 2014 playoffs in a 14th place tie in the championship standings with two of the other 15 playoff drivers, did anyone really expect him to finish runner-up to champion Kevin Harvick that season — with zero wins and no top two finishes until the season finale, no less?
As one of only two drivers who have not finished a race outside of the top 24 this season, Newman is having the same kind of an opportunistic season that he had back in 2014, a season during which he only failed to finish one race. He has advanced an average of 6.20 positions per race so far this season. No other driver as advanced more than an average of 4.00.
It will still be a challenge for Newman to qualify for the playoffs, but if he can do that and he can keep doing what he’s been doing and getting the most out of his car on a weekly basis, he will be the ultimate championship dark horse.
Do you expect to see any of these five drivers enter the Championship 4 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday, November 17 with a chance to win the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series championship? Which four drivers do you expect to advance to the Championship 4, and who do you believe will ultimately win the title?