NASCAR post-Off Week Team check ins: Stewart-Haas Racing & Team Penske
As we draw nearer to Sunday and the Cup Series’ return to action at Nashville let’s see how the top Ford teams are faring 16 races into the season.
Stewart-Haas Racing: #4 (Kevin Harvick) #10 (Aric Almirola) #14 (Chase Briscoe) #41 (Ryan Preece)
Photo: Evan McNelia
Kevin Harvick has been carrying Stewart-Haas Racing in his final season and is currently the only SHR driver within the playoff field.
Harvick and his No. 4 sit 5th in both the driver and owners points standings, 25 points back from series leader, Martin Truex Jr..
While he does not have a win, Harvick has finished all but two races inside of the top 20. He has seven top 10s with top-five finishes at Auto Club Speedway, Phoenix, Richmond, and Darlington where he finished runner-up. He is one top-five finish short of 250 in his career.
Harvick is the second-ranked winless driver in the standings behind only Ross Chastain. Though, he still has 20 races left to find a victory this season. In 2012 with RCR it took him until the second-to-last race of the season but he managed to secure a victory at Phoenix. Harvick has just four winless seasons in his career, only one of which came post-2010.
On June 21st, SHR made the announcement that NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Josh Berry would be stepping into the role of driver of the No. 4 in 2024 after Harvick’s retirement. Berry made the Xfinity Championship 4 in his debut full-time season last year.
After Harvick, it’s a steep fall-off for SHR as Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41, is next in the standings at 25th. He’s 62 points out of the driver playoffs and 108 points out of the owners playoffs.
Preece got out to a tough start to the season DNFing in three of the first six races of the year. As of late, he has worked himself into a nice rhythm going into the off week off with four straight top-20 finishes. He’s finished in the top 20 eight times total this season and earned his first career pole at Martinsville. It will likely take a win to make the playoffs, but Preece has shown growth so far in the No. 41.
The driver of the No. 10, Aric Almirola is just behind Preece in the standings, 26th in driver points and 27th in owners points. Almirola had initially intended to retire following the 2022 season but he elected to come back for one more year.
He’s had a tough go of it this season with his least consistent start since 2015. He’s finished in the top 20 just five times and his best finish this season was a 6th-place run at Martinsville. He’ll be looking for a stronger second half to his 2023 campaign in what could be his final season.
Chase Briscoe sits in 31st in both standings, the last of the SHR drivers. However, his standings position is not a result of poor performance but rather a massive L3 penalty that was given to the team after Charlotte.
Inspection on the No. 14 at the NASCAR R&D Center found the NACA Duct on the car was a counterfeit piece. The No. 14 was docked a whopping 120 driver and owners points. Should Briscoe earn a victory and a spot in the playoffs, he will have to work against a 25-point deficit after losing playoff points as well. His crew chief was suspended for six races and the team was fined $250,000. The penalty dropped Briscoe from the playoff fringe to near the back of the field.
Briscoe has had nine top-20 and four top-10 finishes this season. He had a three-race streak of top-five finishes at the Bristol Dirt Race, Martinsville and Talladega.
Team Penske: #2 (Austin Cindric) #12 (Ryan Blaney) #22 (Joey Logano)
Photo: Evan McNelia
Team Penske is running as strong as ever with two cars currently in the top 10 in the standings with wins already this season.
Sophomore driver Austin Cindric hasn’t caught the same success that he was able to find out of the gates his rookie year. Though, it is hard to top opening your first full-time season with a Daytona 500 victory.
This year he’s struggled with consistency with just six top-20 finishes and two top-10s. He placed 6th at Las Vegas and Circuit of the Americas. Last season he had an eight-race run of consecutive top-20s. Currently 21st in driver points and 39 points out of the playoffs he will need that same consistency to have a chance at clinching a spot. He’s 22nd in owners points and the 85-point gap means he’d likely need a win to reach the owners playoffs.
Ryan Blaney managed to break his 59-race winless streak at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Coca-Cola 600. He is currently running third in driver points, 24 points back from Truex Jr.. He’s been super consistent this season with nine top-10 races.
In the seven-race stretch between Martinsville and World Wide Technology Raceway, Blaney managed six top-10 finishes. At Phoenix and Talladega he finished runner-up and he was third at Dover. If he can put out these same performances come playoffs Blaney could be primed for his first Championship 4 appearance.
Defending Cup Series Champion Joey Logano has already secured himself a playoff spot with an early-season win at Atlanta. Otherwise, Logano has struggled more than his average year.
Logano has only finished in the top 20 in 10 races. He’s DNFed in three of the six races that he has finished worse than 20th. However, he’s been one of the more consistent drivers in collecting top 10s with eight. He has runner-up finishes at Daytona and Martinsville. He also closed out the first segment of the season with back-to-back third-place finishes at Gateway and Sonoma.
Currently sitting 9th in the standings, Logano is 81 points back from the leader and will be hoping to make up some ground in the final 10 races of the regular season as he pursues the 6th Championship 4 appearance of his career.