Justin Marks, owner of Trackhouse Racing, was commenting on his team’s status after his driver, Ross Chastain, had just won Charlotte’s Coca-Cola 600. Chastain’s win was a breakthrough of sorts, one for the little guys.
In NASCAR, the little guys are all the teams that compete against the sport’s big three, Rick Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske, who dominate stock car racing.
There have been 14 races so far this year and the big three had won 12 straight until Chastain stopped the streak at Charlotte. The big three quickly re-established themselves though, Penske’s Ryan Blaney winning at Nashville last week.
And it’s expected one of their drivers will win again Sunday at Michigan and the next week in Mexico City and the next week after that, because going in, one of the big three is always expected to win.
The NextGen car, introduced in 2022, was supposed to change that and for a while it looked like it might. In the past, what mainly separated the big three from everybody else was the level of sponsorship and factory support they got and the ability to basically build their own cars.
The other teams, lacking the financial resources and personnel of the big three, didn’t have the technical expertise to craft aerodynamic bodies and downforce where fractions of inches could mean the difference between being competitive and staying stuck in the back of the pack.
But with the NextGen car, everybody got the same parts and pieces and NASCAR mandated that they could not be altered in any way. So, when the car was introduced and was basically new to everybody, the smaller teams had a shot. In 2022, the little guys won 14 of the 36 races. And they won 14 more in 2023.
But even then, things were changing as the big three started to regain the advantage. Since the NextGen cars couldn’t be altered, research and development, looking for some way to get an edge, became extremely important.
And when you have hundreds of employees and state-of-the art technology, your chances of finding something are much better than someone who doesn’t have access to that kind of equipment or the time or personnel to work with it.
And slowly, the big three are starting to flex their muscles again, Last year, the little guys won 10 of 36 races, a dip from the two years before. And as we start closing in on the mid-point of the season in 2025, Chastain’s win stands alone. It seems the big guys are back.
“We don’t have the speed we’ve had the last couple years,” Marks said according to nascar.com. “The sport kind of ebbs and flows and teams have periods of a lot of winning and then get passed by and kind of have to regroup or re-engineer the team to get back. That’s kind of where we are right now,” Marks added.
Trackhouse is a relative newcomer to the NASCAR scene but it’s made a pretty big splash. In fact, you can make a strong case that the two best little guys in NASCAR are two of its newest teams, Trackhouse and 23XI.
Despite the fact that it is virtually an independent, it gets no help from Chevy and is not aligned with any of the big three although it does get engines from the ECR (Earnhardt Childress Racing) and Hendrick, Trackhouse has been competitive.
That’s not the norm though. The best little guy teams usually have some kind of factory backing and/or alliances with one of the big three. Like 23XI, for example. It has a technical alliance with Gibbs and is supported by Toyota.
There are 15 teams that compete regularly in the NASCAR Cup series, the three big guys and 12 little guys, but of those 12, very few are competitive, maybe five or six at most, and of that group Trackhouse and 23XI clearly stand out.
Since the NextGen car was introduced in 2022, the little guys have won 39 races. Trackhouse has won nine of those and 23XI seven. Combined, that’s 41 percent of the total.
Richard Childress Racing has won eight, but it has been in steady decline, gotten worse every year since the NextGen car was introduced, and of the six little guy teams ranked by the Old Guy Sport competition index, it sits last this year with a pathetic 29 points, and 28 of those came in the first race of the season.
Chastain has opened the door for more little guy victories in 2025, but they’re getting harder to come by as the big three try to slam it shut. We’ll just have to wait and see if one of them can win again. Frankly, the odds are against it but especially in racing, never say never.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Michigan: 1-William Byron, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at Michigan: Tyler Reddick. Top five at Michigan last year: 1-Reddick, 2-Byron, 3-Ty Gibbs, 4-Kyle Busch, 5-Ron Keselowski.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport picks: 1-Larson, 2-Christopher Bell, 3-Byron. Nashville winner: Ryan Blaney. OGS record: 5-6.
OGS competition index top 10 after Nashville: 1-Larson 291 points, 2-Hamlin 263, 3-Bell 228, 4-Byron 214, 5-Blaney 179, 6-Ross Chastain 102, 7-Chase Briscoe 99, 8-Joey Logano 90, 9-Josh Berry 83, 10-Bubba Wallace 73.
OGS competition index on intermediate tracks (tracks similar to Michigan): 1-Larson 176, 2-Blaney 164, 3-Byron 163, 4-Hamlin 108, 5-Chastain 102, 6-Briscoe 79, 7-Logano 78, 8-Bell 71, 9-Berry 59, 10=Alex Bowman 58.