NASCAR 2018 Season Countdown

Well it’s that time of the year again, Super Bowl coming up this weekend and then the countdown to NASCAR’s Super Bowl of racing The Daytona 500 on February 18, 2018. In this these blogs I will be going over all the teams including new ones for the 2018 season. I will make future blogs about events leading up to Daytona if this gets enough interest. So let’s get this started!!
As we all know this will be the first year that there isn’t going to be a Earnhardt in the Daytona 500 (unless Jeffrey makes it)But that’s not to say that NASCAR is lacking talent! The “Young Guns” seem to be taking over the sport. Names like Blaney, Larson, Elliott and Jones to name a few. Then the “Veterans” like Johnson, the Busch brothers, Keslowski, Harvick and some guy they call Truex.
Martin Truex Jr. showed us in 2017 why Dale Earnhardt Sr. hired him into DEI at a young age. Truex returns in his Furniture Racing #78 Toyota. He dominated the sport like we haven’t seen in a while, kinda reminded me of a young Jeff Gordon! He posted 8 wins and 19 top 5’s. I look for that dominance to continue in 2018!

Kyle Busch, last years runner up. Will look to keep his winning ways up as he posted 5 wins and 22 top 5’s. Kyle returns in his M&M’s Gibbs Racing #18 Toyota.

Kevin Harvick returns for his 17th season in the the Stewart-Haas Ford #4 team. Harvick had a par season to his standards last year posting 2 wins and 14 top 5’s, finishing 3rd in points.

Brad Keselowski returns for his 11 season in the Team Penske Ford #2 team. Last year Brad had 3 wins to go along with 15 top 5’s, finishing 4th in points.

Chase Elliott is some of the big news this offseason because he is moving from the #24 to the #9 team, the number his dad (Bill Elliott) made so famous! He is still with Hendricks Motorsports. Last year Chase posted no wins but a solid 12 top 5’s, finishing 5th in points. This will be his 3rd year as a full time driver.

Denny Hamlin returns to the FedEx Gibbs Racing Toyota #11 team for his 14th year. 2017 he posted 2 wins and 15 top 5’s and finished 6th in points.

Kyle Larson will be in his Chip Gannasi #42 Chevrolet. He had a very strong 2017 season where he dominated the first half of the season and ended up with 4 wins and 15 top 5’s and finished 8th in points. If he puts a whole season together he could easily do what Truex did last year to the rest of the competition!

Another young gun is Ryan Blaney in his Team Penske Ford #12. Ryan is entering his 3rd year full time. Last season he had stellar season and finished with his first win and 4 top 5’s. His future looks very bright!

And “ole 7 time” Jimmie Johnson in his Lowe’s Hendricks Racing #48 Chevrolet is back again for his 17th full time season. Last year Johnson posted 3 wins and 4 top 5’s. It wasn’t a great season for the #48 team but something tells me he’s nowhere near done!

This will be the first installment of my NASCAR blog, the next will include the next 10 drivers. Once I get all the drivers I will start doing daily news and notes leading up to the Daytona 500. I am also thinking about doing a weekly DraftKings blog for each race during the season. Just let me know in the comments if you would be interested, if I get enough interest I will start on the Daytona 500 race. Thanks for checking this out and as always pull those belts tight and hammer down!!!!