NASCAR Christmas wish list: What the top drivers, teams are wishing for ahead of 2024 Cup Series season

All across the nation, Christmas is a time for peace on Earth and goodwill toward others. And unlike most other times of the year, it isn’t a time for racing.

With the 2023 season now well behind them, Christmas marks some welcome and necessary downtime for NASCAR’s drivers and teams before they finalize their 2024 plans and get to work for the start of the season and the Daytona 500 in February. Soon enough, that time will come and they’ll try to realize their hopes and dreams on the track. Which, surely, are being wished for in this current season of hopes and dreams.

With an eye toward the 2024 season, we’ve put together a Christmas wish list for some of NASCAR’s best drivers and their teams, whether they’re looking to build on what success they had in the year that has been or a turnaround in the New Year that will be.

Hendrick Motorsports: Healthy drivers

Hendrick Motorsports had yet another successful season in 2023, as their 10 wins between William Byron and Kyle Larson — both of whom made the Championship 4 — were the most for any one organization in the Cup Series. But Hendrick’s success was largely limited to Byron and Larson due to off-track incidents that derailed their other two drivers’ seasons.

The trouble started when Chase Elliott suffered a leg injury in a snowboarding accident early in the season, forcing him to miss six races in March and April, and was compounded when Alex Bowman missed three races due to a back injury he suffered while racing winged sprint cars. Both missed the playoffs and eventually went winless, making 2023 a season to forget for half the company.

Some steps are already being taken to ensure a repeat of Hendrick drivers’ off-track misfortunes doesn’t occur: During a recent appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Bowman shared that he will cut back on the amount of races he runs outside of NASCAR.

Team Penske: Finish strong, start stronger

The common thread of back-to-back championships for Team Penske is that both have been the end result of seasons where the team snuck up on their competition and got hot at the right time. Joey Logano’s 2022 season wasn’t nearly so statistically dominant or spectacular as Chase Elliott’s or Ross Chastain’s, but he performed when he needed to in the playoffs to make the Championship 4 and then won the title off a dominant performance at Phoenix. 

Likewise, Ryan Blaney went into a slump after winning this year’s Coca-Cola 600, but came roaring back in the final six races to win the Cup championship and make everyone forget all about what had been a down year for Penske otherwise. That down year consisted of Logano being shut out of Victory Lane after an early-season win at Atlanta and becoming the first defending Cup champion to ever be eliminated in the Round of 16, while Austin Cindric endured a massive sophomore slump and went winless.

No one at Team Penske is going to look a gift horse in the mouth with the last two Bill France Cups in their possession. But surely, they’re hoping for a more complete season across their organization in 2024.

Stewart-Haas Racing: A youth movement turnaround

Ever since he became co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009, Tony Stewart has leaned heavily on veteran drivers — many of whom are part of his inner circle — to carry the banner for his Cup Series team. For both natural and performance reasons, that’s changing in 2024.

With Kevin Harvick retiring from NASCAR and Aric Almirola moving on to a part-time racing schedule, Stewart-Haas Racing is going in a new direction after a winless 2023 season. Harvick is being replaced with Cup rookie Josh Berry, while Almirola’s seat in the No. 10 will be filled by Noah Gragson. Those two will join existing drivers Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece, giving SHR a lineup of drivers all under the age of 35 — Berry, 33, is actually the old man of the group by three days over Preece.

For an organization that traditionally chose grizzled vets for its open seats — Harvick, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Clint Bowyer chief among them — Stewart-Haas going in a much younger direction is a rather marked departure. One that, they surely hope, leads to a return to form after a 2023 to forget.

RFK Racing: A win for the boss

After laying the foundation in 2022, Brad Keselowski both oversaw and benefitted from RFK Racing’s renaissance in 2023. The organization had its two cars finish in the top 10 in the championship standings for the first time in a decade, and no organization in NASCAR was more improved, nor hotter in the month of August when Chris Buescher won back-to-back races at Richmond and Michigan before winning Daytona to make it three of five.

Keselowski came up just short of Victory Lane himself, losing on a last-lap pass to Joey Logano at Atlanta in March before playing good soldier and pushing Buescher to the win at Daytona in August. Naturally, that makes breaking Keselowski’s long winless streak dating back to Talladega in the spring of 2021 a priority for RFK Racing in the new year.

23XI Racing: Wins for Bubba Wallace

In a necessary step as he has ascended to stardom, the 2023 season saw Bubba Wallace prove he belongs among the ranks of NASCAR’s top drivers. Making the playoffs for the first time in his career, Wallace advanced to the Round of 12 and ran at the front more consistently throughout the year, earning a career-best 10th-place finish in the championship standings while matching his career-high marks in top fives (5) and top 10s (10).

What was missing was a win, and it surely stung that Wallace gave at least two away. He was leading Talladega on the final lap in the spring when a late block sent him spinning off Ryan Blaney’s bumper, and he didn’t get the final restart he needed to close out a Texas performance where he led a career-high 111 laps from the pole.

Wallace has proven he can deliver with two career wins since joining 23XI Racing, an organization that won twice in 2023 with Tyler Reddick. Some more wins for Wallace in 2024 would go a long way toward the continued rise of Wallace, Reddick and their Denny Hamlin/Michael Jordan-owned team.

More Christmas wishes