Getty Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (front) races at Sonoma.
The NASCAR season has reached its mid-point, which makes it the perfect time to recognize those that have delivered early. JTG Daugherty Racing stands atop the list of winners as the organization enjoys a career year.
The 2023 Cup Series season started in the best possible way for JTG Daugherty Racing and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — they won the Daytona 500. This marked Stenhouse’s first win since the 2017 season, and it put him back into the playoffs.
Winning a Crown Jewel event is enough to make 2023 a winning season for the single-car team, but Stenhouse has backed up his bold talk by delivering consistency.
Since reuniting with championship-winning crew chief Mike Kelley, Stenhouse has delivered 11 top-15 finishes, five top-10s, two top-fives, and one win through 16 races. For comparison, These numbers are almost identical to AJ Allmendinger’s full season in 2014 when he delivered JTG Daugherty’s first win.
Stenhouse’s average finish is 14.6, the best of his full-time Cup Series career. It is also the best of any JTG Daugherty Racing driver dating back to the 2009 season. Though it remains to be seen whether he maintains this consistency throughout the rest of the season.
A Cup Series Champion Joins the Winners List
GettyCup Series drivers race at Dover Motor Speedway.
Stenhouse is not the only driver in the Winners category after 16 races. There are multiple others, including those that have snapped winless streaks of their own.
Martin Truex Jr. is a fitting example. The 2017 Cup Series champion had a consistent season in 2022, but he missed the playoffs after going winless. Rather than make sweeping changes on the No. 19 team, Truex and Joe Gibbs Racing just pushed forward with the confidence that they would return to their winning ways.
“I never thought we couldn’t win again,” Truex told media members at Sonoma Raceway. “We should have won a bunch of races last year. Even though our cars probably weren’t the best cars in the field, Toyota as a group was probably off, I still felt like we should have won five or six races.
“We had some bad luck, we had some crazy things happen. That’s just racing. I don’t think anybody got down. That’s why my team is all the same still right now. We never gave up believing in each other.
“We just kept working hard. We have to work harder, be smarter, make better decisions. You put better cars with that, the next thing you know, you’re winning races, leading laps again.”
The result is that Truex now has two more wins on his resume. He captured the rain-postponed race at Dover Motor Speedway and then he won for the fourth time at Sonoma Raceway. Truex is now the points leader with 10 races remaining in the regular season.
‘Willy B’ Remains on the Rise
GettyCup Series drivers race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
There are several drivers worthy of being included on the list of mid-season winners. Ryan Blaney snapped his own winless streak by winning the Coca-Cola 600, but he has also dealt with struggles due to Ford’s limitations at certain tracks and some bad luck.
One prominent driver that has maximized the season is William Byron. The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro entered the season with four career wins, but there were some question marks after he and Hendrick Motorsports struggled during the summer stretch in previous seasons.
Byron crashed in the season-opening Daytona 500 and finished 25th at Auto Club Speedway, but he delivered back-to-back wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Phoenix Raceway to close out the West Coast swing.
Byron went on to win his third race of the season at Darlington Raceway, which marked a career-high for him. These three wins, along with his five other top-five finishes, have helped him move into second place in the championship standings behind Truex.
There are still 10 races remaining in the regular season, but Byron is already on pace to match his career-best mark of 20 top-10 finishes while surpassing his previous best of 12 top-fives in 2021.
