NASCAR DFS 2021 Silly Season Wrap-Up

On the cusp of, what should hopefully be, the final season of the Generation-Six era car – the 2020 NASCAR Silly Season was a bit active. We expected movement as several top to mid-tier drivers were at the ends of their contracts. However, only a few of these drivers opted to remain with their current teams. Furthermore, several shops sadly announced the closure of their operations. What we didn’t foresee was the abundance of new teams popping up in their steads.

This renaissance of new ownership was supposed to come in 2021 – yet that was based on the idea of this year being the first season of the Generation-Seven car. Covid-19 had other ideas about NASCAR unveiling it’s newer, supposedly cheaper to produce, model. Yet, that didn’t stop the influx of new teams set to make their maiden voyages into NASCAR as one model sails off into the sunset and a new one approaches. Therefore, let’s recap this flurry of free agent maneuvers and what our DFS expectations should be of them in 2021.

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Kyle Larson – #5, Hendrick Motorsports

Larson entered the 2020 season as the hottest free agent on the market. It was just a matter of where the talented driver was going to take his services for 2021. Then Covid-19 hit, the drivers spent perhaps too much time on Twitch in their simulators, and the rest is history. Now after some targeted character rebuilding, sensitivity training, and another Chili-Bowl victory, Larson is ready to start anew at Hendrick.

As far as real-life NASCAR concerns, perhaps not all fences have been mended on Larson’s public persona. If you go to the Hendrick website and click on Larson’s driver page, you can clearly see he has zero major sponsors yet. Larson has his own who sponsor his dirt racing endeavors. Hendrick has his company-wide sponsors that you’ll see on the #5 hauler. However, as far as what’s on the side and hood of the #5 at Daytona Speed Weeks – we’ve got nothing as of yet.

The Chili Bowl victory will help, however, what Larson needs is time and performance. Corporate America doesn’t seem quite ready to attach its name to a driver who literally lost his seat at Ganassi less than a year ago due to his use of a horribly, derogatory term.

As far as NASCAR DFS expectations, this should be the best we’ve seen of Larson – ever. We’ve seen him in victory lane before when he piloted the #42. However, it became very apparent when Matt Kenseth took over, that Larson was getting way more out of his car performance-wise than what the car was capable of itself. It should be fun seeing Larson not have to over-drive his car every week just to sniff a top-5 finish. While I absolutely despise that this racing is happening, Larson’s first opportunity to shine should come in the Bristol-dirt race.

Corey Lajoie – #7, Spire Motorsports

After a few subpar seasons at Go-FAS, Lajoie heads to Spire as part of a multi-year deal. Lajoie may have been in line to replace Ryan Preece at JTG-Daugherty in the #37. However, I believe his silly feud with Denny Hamlin put an unneeded shadow on Lajoie. Let’s be honest, in the #32, Lajoie was never going to be capable of showing what his skills were. Igniting an unneeded and one-sided rivalry with Denny Hamlin just made him look that much more undesirable. If you act this way with sponsorship, you can get better rides. Without those sponsor dollars, you’re destined to find your way to Spire.

And that’s where we will see Lajoie for at least the next few seasons. Now Lajoie goes from a 25th through 30th place driver to a 29th or worse. Most weeks in the #32, Lajoie was a cash consideration for 2020. Now, he’ll be part of the punt-plays we talk about among the Rick Ware drivers.

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Chase Briscoe – #14, Stewart-Haas Racing

Briscoe firmly believed he needed double-digit victories in the Xfinity Series to move his way up to the Cup Series. Although he missed that mark by just one and failed to win the Xfinity title, Briscoe has been promoted to #14 for the 2021 Cup Season. He fills the seat left vacant by Clint Bowyer who opted for retirement and color analysis in the Fox NASCAR booth alongside Jeff Gordon and Mike Joy.

While nine victories in a calendar season is an amazing feat; the merits of those victories will always be up for debate when said driver has a top-three vehicle with perhaps the best pit-crew in said series. Expecting those results to translate into success for Briscoe is a fool’s errand for 2021. In fact, if Briscoe has a season that reflected teammate Cole Custer’s rookie campaign – we shouldn’t be surprised. Briscoe is getting the keys to a top-16 car. The only question is how long before Briscoe starts cranking out the results we saw from Bowyer in this same car?

While I think Briscoe could finish the 2021 season with an average finish better than 20th, and maybe even find his way into the playoffs via points, his main concern will be his aggressive nature. While his assertiveness is what helped propel him to this point in his career, it could easily be what undoes him in Cup. When you have the best car you can throw your weight around. When you’re a star-eyed rookie in a 10th-16th place vehicle making questionable passes, you’ll get punted by Alex Bowman.

Christopher Bell – #20, Joe Gibbs Racing

Filed under the worst kept secret of 2020, Bell moves from the now-defunct #95 over to Joe Gibbs to fill Erik Jones old seat. Since Bell’s earliest days at Kyle Busch Motorsports, it has been his destiny to drive for Joe Gibbs in the Cup Series. Now that dream is realized for both parties in the 2021 Cup season.

With Jones behind the wheel, the #20 went to victory lane twice (three times if you include last year’s Clash victory) and scored 28 top-five finishes during his three-year tenure. However, with Bell breathing down Jones’s neck, Jones was going to need a stellar season to keep Bell from taking his seat. Stellar is exactly what Jones didn’t deliver – especially out of the gate once racing resumed.

Interestingly enough – the same consistency Jones needed was not seen in Bell last season. We can grade Bell on a curve knowing how the #95 was running on a shoestring and announced mid-season they were closing shop, but only two top-five finishes from Bell was surprising. However, four top-17 finishes to close out the year did point to brighter horizons for Bell.

Now in an actual Joe Gibbs vehicle, instead of one getting loose affiliation, the sky is the limit for Bell. However, Gibbs has shown over the past decade that if a driver doesn’t hit the sky (Jones, Suarez) then he has no problem promoting whoever is racing in the Xfinity Series. Gibbs’s trigger to pull drivers has been quick and it’s been hard for drivers to have reasonable expectations when your teammates are Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, and Martin Truex Junior. Bell has amazing talent, hopefully, his leash is a little longer than what was afforded to the driver who used to hold his seat.

Bubba Wallace – #23, 23XI Racing

While Wallace may not have been the best talent available on the free-agent market; he was perhaps the most desired driver. With the race-related events that headlined the summer of 2020, Wallace became a beacon for civil rights. His notoriety brought with it new-found sponsorship; including the food-delivery service DoorDash and outerwear company Columbia besides his previously inked deal with Coke.

With money in his pocket and an ever-expanding fan base, outside of NASCAR, Wallace became the biggest free-agent in 2020. This despite just three top-five finishes at Richard Petty Motorsports and an average finish of 23.7 over three seasons. Although RPM threw everything at Wallace to keep his services in house, Wallace opted to join the newly created 23XI Racing – a joint venture between Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan.

Just how Wallace performs behind the wheel of his new team is the biggest x-factor of the 2021 season. First off, we have no real base-line on what to expect from the #23 car. Yes, it’s a Toyota and will have affiliation with Joe Gibbs but to what degree? This could be like the #95 of Leavine Family Racing running a top-20 car. Or, perhaps this is the #78 of Furniture Row Racing reborn operating as Gibbs’s fifth vehicle.

Furthermore, just how good is Wallace? It’s unfair to Wallace to judge his numbers in the #43 and transpose those to this new team. RPM has been on a down-turn the last decade, needing partnerships with Richard Childress and Rick Ware to keep the struggling ship afloat. Chances are that Wallace will see a resurgence much the same way Aric Almirola did when he left Petty for Stewart-Haas.

Anthony Alfredo – #38, Front Row Motorsports

In maybe the most surprising move of the offseason, the #38 is going from promising talent John Hunter Nemechek to Anthony Alfredo. After what many would consider a successful rookie campaign, Nemechek is going back down to the Trucks Series to race for Kyle Busch and compete for a championship there. Meanwhile, Alfredo gets the surprising promotion to Front Row.

While I can appreciate the long-play from Nemechek aligning himself with Joe Gibbs and hoping this translates into a Trucks title and future JGR ride, I do question Front Row hiring Alfredo. Not so much with Alfredo who has shown promise in his limited rides for Richard Childress in the Xfinity Series (nine top-ten finishes in 21 starts). It’s the fact that his exposure to NASCAR has been just that – limited. He ran a part-time schedule last season in the Xfinity Season. The year prior, Alfredo ran a limited schedule in the Trucks Series. Heck, the only thing close to full-time he’s done was the K&N East Series in 2018 when he ran 14/ 14 races and in the Cars Series the year before.

More than likely this all boils down to money and why the #38 team sided with Alfredo instead of signing a veteran like Ty Dillon or Corey Lajoie. Regardless, with no practice for the majority of the year, the 2021 season maybe a bit of a learning curve for Alfredo as he transitions to his fourth different series in four seasons.

Ross Chastain – #42, Chip Ganassi Racing

The feel-good story of the 2021 Cup season is the watermelon farmer finally getting his chance. We’ve watched Chastain toil away in the Xfinity Series driving the #4 for JD Motorsports and then get his chance with Chip Ganassi in the #42. A chance that paid off at Las Vegas for both parties as Chastain won in the summer of 2018. However, few people bring up the fact that Nemechek won in that same car at Texas later on in the year. Or that if Ganassi had simply put someone behind that seat full-time they could have won the championship that season.

I digress, what does matter is we get to see just what Chastain is capable of behind a higher-tier program. Yes, we’ve seen Chastain in the #15 and even in a few races for Jack Roush in the #6. However, the #15 is and has been a pure backmarker. Also, I’m of the opinion that Roush is nowhere near as good as people believe them to be. In fact, it’s up for debate whether or not Front Row Motorsports has a better program than the “Cat in the Hat”. This is all to say, don’t hold his finishes of 27th, 17th, and 23rd in the #6 against him.

Chastain in the #42 should be a top-20 driver. While Chastain is incapable of wringing out of this car what Larson accomplished, surely Chastain is at least on par or a hair better than Matt Kenseth’s 2020 campaign in that vehicle (average finish of 21.4, one top-five). One thing that may work against Chastain is what got him into consistent trouble in the Xfinity Series – his aggressiveness on restarts and late in races. However, he may have to push the envelope in order to milk top-12 finishes out of the #42 as opposed to Kenseth who was content riding to finish the race on the lead lap.

Erik Jones – #43, Richard Petty Motorsports

What happens to a driver when they have really good talent, a couple of wins and playoff appearances, but no major sponsorship backing? Well, when the wins and playoffs dry up, so does your ride and you find yourself driving for declining Richard Petty Motorsports. As previously stated, Jones’s back was already up against the wall before the season ever started in 2020. Jones was going to have to give Joe Gibbs a reason to re-sign him. Sadly for Jones, his inconsistency post restart combined with the folding of the JGR affiliated #95 precipitated the promotion of Bell into his seat.

Now, Jones finds himself trying to make the most of a team with no victories since Aric Almirola’s Coke 400 win in the summer of 2014. Heck, before that lone superspeedway win, the last time the #43 had graced victory lane was with John Andretti in 1999. Despite the storied history of this car and this team, the #43 has not been a good car for a very long time. The best average finish this team has seen in the last three decades belongs to AJ Allmendinger from the 2011 season – an average finish of 16.06 with one top-five and ten top-ten finishes. As time has waned on, the performance from this team has gotten worse – especially as they have had to rely on partnerships with other teams to keep the lights on.

I’m a believer in Jones’s talent and if he were to race for Dale Jr in the Xfinity Series he would be the favorite to win the championship. However, in this car, he’ll have to squeeze every last ounce of performance out to sniff the top-15 from week to week.

BJ McLeod – #78, Live Fast Motorsports

The grizzled veteran goes from hired-gun to Cup team owner and driver – reminiscent of the 90s with owner/ drivers like Ricky Rudd and Alan Kulwicki. Although, not near as competitive as Rudd or Kulwicki were. There isn’t much to say here about this weekly entry as pertains to NASCAR DFS. McLeod is a competent driver but there’s no reason to believe this car will be more than a DraftKings oriented punt play. However, with McLeod’s years of experience operating his own Xfinity team – there is optimism at least that McLeod won’t run this operation into the ground.

Daniel Suarez – #99, Trackhouse Motorsports

The final driver we’ll analyze today is Daniel Suarez, now racing for his fourth different team in four seasons. After going full time for Gaunt Brothers, in their first and possibly last full-time operation in 2020, Suarez takes the reigns of the newly formed TrackHouse Motorsports #99. Trackhouse is the brainchild of former driver Justin Marks and just recently announced business partner PitBull.

At this point, it’s just conjecture but I have a feeling that this #99 team will be Germain Racing version 2.0. Like Germain, Trackhouse will be operating in conjunction with Richard Childress Racing. All this resulted in for the #13 team was a perennial 20th through 28th place car with zero wins and just three top-five finishes in 11 seasons. Expecting anything different from this startup in their inaugural season feels like folly.

Like his former Joe Gibbs teammate (Jones), this will be the first time we’ve seen Suarez driving anything besides Toyota. Should a switch in manufacturers amount to anything worth considering? Most likely not. However, this “should” be a step up from Gaunt Brothers and what we saw from Suarez in 2020. The #96 team was constantly limited by the quality of their vehicles and engines. Suarez could always pass the drivers of Rick Ware, Spire, and Premium. However, once he hit the next tier of drivers and equipment his day was maxed out. This season should see him being able to compete performance wise with the likes of JTG Daugherty.

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Author

Phillip Bennetzen

Phill Bennetzen is the creator of the RaceSheets; all-inclusive stats and data NASCAR DFS spreadsheets for the Trucks, Xfinity, and Cup Series. Phill and the RaceSheets can be found at racesheetsdfs.substack.com