The third season of the Next Gen — Gen 7 — era of NASCAR ended with Joey Logano winning his third Cup Series title. This was a season that NASCAR says was historically competitive.
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NASCAR released a year-end recap ahead of the holidays and highlighted some key statistics from last season. Chief among them was the number of winners.
Eighteen drivers reached victory lane last season, starting with William Byron's Daytona 500 win. This list included expected figures such as Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, and Denny Hamlin. It also had a first-time winner in Harrison Burton, who captured Wood Brothers Racing's 100th win.
This number of winners was only one shy of the 2022 season — the first of the Gen 7 era. The 2022 season tied the Modern Era record (1972-present) set in 2001.
The recap highlighted the number of winners. It also focused on the distance between the race winner and the runner-up. According to the provided chart, the average margin of victory was a mere 1.3 seconds.
THE CLOSEST FINISH IN NASCAR HISTORY. KYLE LARSON VS. CHRIS BUESCHER.
Unbelievable. https://t.co/UFL4P04KTc pic.twitter.com/UtePBqmuZd
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) May 6, 2024
Of course, NASCAR's recap noted that three of the 36 points-paying races had much slimmer margins. These races delivered some of the closest finishes in history.
Larson's 0.001-second win over Chris Buescher at Kansas Speedway was the closest finish in the Cup Series. Daniel Suarez's 0.003-second win over Ryan Blaney at Atlanta was the third-closest finish in NASCAR history.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. joined the list with a 0.006-second win over Brad Keselowski at Talladega Superspeedway. This tied Kevin Harvick's first career win (Atlanta 2001) for the seventh-closest finish in history.
Close finishes and a slim average margin of victory both point to the competitiveness at the front of the pack, but what about the rest of the drivers in the field? According to NASCAR, the series delivered more than 181,000 green flag passes, the most since NASCAR began tracking the metric in 2005. More than 2,200 passes were for the lead.
Obviously, the numbers are slightly skewed by the superspeedway races featuring drivers running two-by-two and three-by-three for multiple hours, but many intermediate races also featured thousands of green flag passes.
According to NASCAR's loop data, the playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway had 6,056 green flag passes. The 2023 playoff race at Homestead only had 3,377. That's quite the increase.
