What The Metrics Had To Say About The 2024 Season
The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built several analytical metrics to help give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track—because, as any driver can attest, auto racing isn't always a fair sport.
The following numbers—explained in full detail here—are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, many of which come from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating, which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.
The final metrics from the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season are as shown below:
First, it needs to be pointed out that most of these columns represent season averages, rather than totals. The exceptions are, Expected Wins Earned (XWE), Start/Finish Differential (S/FD), Pass Differential (PD), Caution Position Differential (CPD), Lead Change Shares (LC), Passes (P), Quality Passes (QP), Weighted Percentage Led (WPL), and Fastest Laps (FL). Also, the "Wins," "Top fives," and "Top 10s" columns are based on each race's TDR rankings, not on-track results.
Now, for the analysis. It was mentioned several weeks ago that Kyle Larson was having a historic season according to the metrics, and should come as no surprise that he paced the field in TDR. Larson led in a grand total of 20 different categories, including a clean sweep of every highlighted one except for EARP, in which he was second to Ryan Blaney.
It shouldn't be up for debate that Larson had the best season in 2024, which is why it's disappointing he wasn't able to race for a championship, let alone win it. In fact, of the four drivers who competed for a title in the season finale at Phoenix, Blaney was the only one who ranked in the top four in TDR. He led a close battle for second behind Larson, while his victory in EARP -- a category he also won in 2023 -- shows he got more out of his equipment than any other driver in the sport.
Ranking in third was Christopher Bell, just ahead of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin. Bell didn't make the championship race this season, after doing so in both 2022 and 2023, but he had his most impressive year in the Cup Series. He paced the field in Fastest Lap percentage, while racking up five TDR wins -- his combined career total entering the year was three.
Hamlin ran second to Larson for most of the season, but a disappointing string of runs throughout the playoffs dropped him to fourth, just ahead of his 23XI Racing team's driver Tyler Reddick. Both Reddick and Chase Elliott (sixth) had extremely consistent seasons, but the fact that neither of them scored a single TDR win is revealing. Without dominance, "consistency" is relatively useless, although Elliott at least deserves a shout-out for leading the field in Quality Passes and Weighted Total Passes.
Had this been 2003, there's a chance Elliott or Reddick would have points-stroked their way to a championship in that fashion. Thankfully, it's extremely hard to win a title that way in today's NASCAR, but as fate would so have it, the champion we got instead this year was even worse. To find Joey Logano, you have to scroll all the way down to 10th -- which is two spots better than he finished in the final season-long points.
The best thing that can be said about Logano's 2024 season, is that he and his team gamed the system to perfection. He won at all the right times, and although he needed some luck on his side, he also capitalized on the opportunities provided by such luck. It's no coincidence that Logano's only TDR victory of the season was the championship race at Phoenix, where he won his third Cup Series title.
At the end of the day, though, it's best to simply separate the concept of "champion" from that of the season's best driver. NASCAR is no different from any other sport, in that the top overall performer isn't always rewarded with the big trophy, and that would be the case in any points system. It's simply part of the nature of the game, and the best way to view it is that while Logano did what he needed to do to win the title, it doesn't take away from the season Kyle Larson had.