NASCAR Cup season off to historic start with Next Gen car

The winning teams are familiar, but what’s happening behind the leaders is historic.

Twenty-five drivers have scored at least one top-10 finish in the first three Cup races of the season. The last time more drivers did so at this point was 1973, according to Racing Insights. 

Of the 44 drivers who have competed in Cup this season, only Jacques Villeneuve (born in 1971) and Greg Biffle (born in 1969) were alive then.

Former Cup champion Martin Truex Jr. noted in the offseason that this year had the potential to be topsy-turvy, as teams learned the nuances of the Next Gen car.

“There’s going to be a lot of crazy storylines early in the year,” Truex told NBC Sports in January. “There’s going to be a lot of surprises, and there’s going to be a lot of guys that have a good week, bad week, good week, bad week, hit and miss. 

“I just feel like until we get some time under our belt and find kind of a baseline of what this thing wants at certain tracks, we’re all going to be searching. We’re all going to be taking gambles on what we’re taking to the racetrack, setup-wise.”

Truex finished eighth Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his first top 10 of the season. Also scoring their first top 10 of the year this past weekend were: Alex Bowman (winner), Ross Chastain (third place), William Byron (fifth), Tyler Reddick (seventh) and Christopher Bell (10th).

Only seven times in NASCAR history have 25 or more drivers scored a top 10 in the first three races of the season. Here’s that list:

1965 — 27 drivers

1971 — 27

1960 — 26

1970 — 26

1973 — 26

1950 — 25

2022 — 25

“It’s not surprising that some of these drivers are up front because of the talent they have to make it to the Cup Series,” said Greg Ives, Bowman’s crew chief, of the