Â鶹´«Ã½

When cars roll out onto the high banks of the 2½-mile Daytona International Speedway tri-oval, many of those pairings will be familiar. But some will not.

As always, Silly Season has come to visit the series, putting new faces in new places due to moves like 2017 champion Martin Truex Jr.’s retirement, the closure of Stewart-Haas Racing and more.

Here’s an early look at how those new pairings may rank this coming season:

Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

After turning 30 on Sunday, Briscoe seems primed for his breakout season as he gets a soft landing following the SHR closure, jumping to one of the best teams in the Cup Series.

Briscoe already is a two-time Cup Series winner, including the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in September, which served as a buzzer-beater to earn Briscoe a 2024 playoff berth. He also has 11 career Xfinity Series wins and two in the Craftsman Truck Series.

He replaces Truex, who totaled three wins and two playoff berths across the three seasons of Next Gen competition so far, and will be paired with crew chief James Small. Briscoe should have multiple opportunities to win and make the playoffs in 2025.

Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

If this feels like too high of a ranking for a New Zealander rookie still making his transition from Australian V8 Super Cars to American stock cars, consider the schedule.

NASCAR has greatly increased the number of road courses on the Cup slate in recent years and will run at six of them in 2025. That bodes well for van Gisbergen, who earned his first Cup win on the Chicago Street Course and won three times on road courses in his first full NASCAR season in the Xfinity Series in 2024.

All three Trackhouse drivers, including van Gisbergen, Ross Chastain (Circuit of The Americas, 2022) and Daniel Suarez (Sonoma Raceway, 2022) earned their first Cup wins on road courses for Trackhouse.

Cole Custer, No. 41 Haas Factory Team Ford

After first making it to Cup in 2020 with Stewart-Haas and then being demoted to the team’s Xfinity program after 2022, Custer is back as a fulltime Cup driver with what remains of the rebranded organization.

Custer will be the team’s only Cup driver as it adopts a new name to align more closely with its Formula One branding and scales down from four cars to one. Custer, who earned a Cup win at Kentucky Speedway in 2020, will have a rookie crew chief in Aaron Kramer, who previously was a lead engineer for Chris Buescher and RFK Racing.

Custer won five total Xfinity races and made the championship four twice across the last two seasons, winning the 2023 championship and finishing runner-up in 2024.

Noah Gragson, No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford

Gragson’s topsy-turvy Cup career now lands him with his third team in as many seasons as he lands one of two vacancies at Front Row after being another of the casualties of the Stewart-Haas closure.

Gragson’s rookie 2023 season with Legacy Motor Club was dreadful, even before NASCAR suspended him for the latter portion of that campaign due to impermissible social media activities. But he looked much better at SHR, collecting seven top 10s in 36 races as compared to none in 21 tries in 2023.

Now, he gets to continue with Ford as he lands at FRM, which had one of its best ever overall seasons in 2024 after expanding its relationship with Ford and Team Penske.

Josh Berry, No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford

Another Stewart-Haas victim, Berry’s 2024 rookie season with that team was nothing to write home about as he earned just four top 10s and finished 27th in the final standings.

Now, he replaces a driver who underperformed even more, as Harrison Burton has been demoted back to the Xfinity Series following three mostly terrible seasons for the Wood Brothers, excepting his upset win in the summer race at Daytona International Speedway this past season. The lack of success came despite a very close relationship between the Wood Brothers and Penske.

Outpacing Burton’s overall performance shouldn’t be too hard, but Berry still has to prove that he belongs in the Cup as a fulltime driver.

Michael McDowell, No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

After a seven-year tenure at Front Row that produced a pair of Cup wins, including the 2021 Daytona 500 and the 2023 race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, McDowell is off to a new team, replacing 2024 rookie Zane Smith.

While Spire improved quite a bit in 2024, the No. 71 car often was the exception, lagging behind in overall performance. But McDowell is bringing crew chief Travis Peterson with him, which should help the car’s performance after the McDowell-Peterson pairing posted points finishes of 15th and 23rd the past two seasons.

McDowell’s veteran presence also should be a boost for Spire, which is enjoying increased support from Hendrick Motorsports.

Riley Herbst, No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota

As 23XI expands from two cars to three, Herbst has been tabbed as the driver after collecting a total of three Xfinity wins across the last two seasons for Stewart-Haas.

Herbst was never spectacular during his Xfinity tenure, but slowly improved enough to become a race-winning threat. He also has a tight relationship with sponsor Monster Energy Drink and substantial financial backing from his family, making him a low-risk signing for 23XI.

The biggest question for the driver and team is about its charter tentatively purchased from Stewart-Haas, as that transaction remains in limbo during a court battle between NASCAR and 23XI and Front Row.

Ryan Preece, No. 60 RFK Racing Ford

Now with five fulltime Cup seasons under his belt, Preece has done little to prove he belongs in the series with just 16 top 10s and no wins through 187 career starts.

But Kroger, which sponsored him from 2019-21 with JTG Daugherty Racing, remains a fan, and that was enough to both poach the supermarket away from the team and convince RFK Racing to expand to three teams, leasing a charter from fellow Ford organization Rick Ware Racing, for another opportunity in 2025.

Luckily for Preece, RFK continues to improve as Buescher won multiple times in 2023 and both Buescher and team co-owner/driver Brad Keselowski found victory lane in 2024.

Justin Haley, No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

We saw a preview of this pairing across the final seven races of 2024 as Spire and Rick Ware Racing agreed to a midseason driver swap that sent Haley over to the team early.

It did result in one top 10, a seventh-place run at Talladega Superspeedway, but also in five finishes outside the top 25, raising concern for future performance. But Spire improved its odds for success with the biggest crew chief coup of Silly Season, grabbing longtime Stewart-Haas wrench Rodney Childers, who guided Kevin Harvick to the 2014 title.

Haley, 25, is considered a talented prospect, but has only collected 16 top 10s in 144 starts. That does include Spire’s lone win, however, as Haley won a rain-shortened Daytona summer race back in 2019, when he was a part-timer for the team.

Zane Smith, No. TBA Front Row Motorsports Ford

Though it hasn’t been announced yet, Smith is expected to be the third driver for Front Row in 2025, but little else is known about the pairing as the team works through its lawsuit.

Smith mostly struggled as a rookie in a new third car at Spire that was operated in partnership with Trackhouse. But he did pick up the pace down the stretch, finishing second at Nashville Superspeedway, fifth at Watkins Glen International, seventh at Michigan International Speedway and 10th at Kansas Speedway after having zero top 10s in the first 23 races of the season.

Those performances reminded us of how good Smith was in the Craftsman Truck Series and why he got promoted straight to Cup from there.

Ty Dillon, No. 10 Kaulig Racing

Silly Season’s most uninspiring official hiring has Dillon back in the Cup Series after he put together a dreadful 2024 Craftsman Truck Series campaign with Rackley-WAR Racing, earning just two top 10s in 18 races before being let go.

After being rumored to drive fulltime for Kaulig in 2024, Dillon actually will do so in 2025 for the organization that has a close relationship with Richard Childress Racing, which is owned by Dillon’s grandfather.

Dillon has just seven top 10s in six fulltime Cup efforts, including just one combined top 10 from 2022-23 with Legacy and Spire.

TBA, No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Ford

We don’t yet know who will drive this car in 2025, though we do have a good idea of who the top two candidates are.

After the midseason RWR-Spire driver swap, Corey LaJoie ran the car for the final seven races of 2024, posting a best finish of 14th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The swap brough to an end a three-plus-year driver-team combination that produced five top 10s.

The other option is team owner Rick Ware’s son, Cody Ware, who has made 106 starts for the team since 2017 with two top 10s.