NASCAR: The overlooked rule that could put one Cup team at risk

Several charters changed hands before the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, but that doesn’t exempt them from the minimum performance standard.

Since the 2016 season, there have been 36 charters in the NASCAR Cup Series, and demand for charters has increased in recent years. Several charters changed hands ahead of the 2022 season after a crazy silly season in 2021.

A number of charter transactions involved Spire Motorsports, which controlled three charters last year. They ran two full-time entries, the #7 Chevrolet for Corey LaJoie and the #77 Chevrolet for several drivers, and they leased out another charter to Trackhouse Racing Team for them to run their #99 Chevrolet for Daniel Suarez.

They sold two of these three charters to Kaulig Racing for 2022. Kaulig Racing, now in their first full season of Cup Series competition, run the #31 Chevrolet for Justin Haley and the #16 Chevrolet for multiple drivers.

But with ambitions to continue running a two-car team in 2022, Spire Motorsports began searching for a second charter after this sale.

They ended up getting one from Rick Ware Racing, which downsized from four cars to two for the 2022 season. However, the charter they acquired from Rick Ware’s team had been used to run the #53 team, and that team finished in 35th in the owner standings among the 36 charter teams in both the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

This could prove significant, as the charter teams are all hold to a minimum performance standard in the Cup Series, a standard which can sometimes be overlooked.

Should a team finish in the bottom three in the owner standings (among the charter teams) for three straight seasons, NASCAR has the right to repossess that team’s charter.

Charter transactions don’t change that. So the new Spire Motorsports charter entered the year as one of two at-risk charters.

The team opted to use the at-risk charter for the #7 Chevrolet as opposed to the #77 Chevrolet, and the move made sense, considering the fact that the car driven by a full-time driver is generally less likely to finish outside the top 33 than the car shared by several drivers.

But could the #7 team actually finish outside of the top 33 this year?

It’s not a likely scenario, but it is certainly one worth monitoring moving forward due to the ramifications it could have.

The team currently sits in 28th place with 140 points in the owner standings, and that includes a career-high fifth place finish for LaJoie at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He also has four finishes of 31st or lower in 10 starts.

Sitting behind the #7 team are the #6 RFK Racing team of Brad Keselowski (eight points behind), which would really rank 17th if not for their 100-point penalty from March, and the #21 Wood Brothers Racing team of Harrison Burton (10 points behind), a team definitely possessing the speed it takes to move up as Burton gets more acclimated to the Cup Series.

Additionally, the #47 JTG Daugherty Racing team of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (12 points behind) and the #16 Kaulig Racing team (16 points behind) have underperformed as it comes to results so far in 2022 and could very well make a jump.

Even if the #7 team did drop those four positions though, it would still rank 32nd. And ranking 33rd is the #77 team, which could provide at least somewhat of a buffer.

But ranking 34th is the #15 Rick Ware Racing team, and that team finished in 34th last year. So they will be doing everything that they can possibly do to avoid being at risk entering the 2023 season. That team sits just one point behind the #77 team, which sits 34 points behind the #7 team.

Again, the #7 team seems to be pretty safe, but it’s still a little bit too close for comfort, even with 26 races to go.

Notably, the other at-risk charter, the one that had been controlled by StarCom Racing last year, was sold to 23XI Racing for them to run their second car, the #45 Toyota, for Kurt Busch. Among the charter teams, the #00 StarCom Racing team finished in 34th place in the owner standings in 2020 and 36th in 2021.

But compared to Spire Motorsports, there really shouldn’t be any concern here, with the #45 team sitting in an 18th place tie in the owner standings.