NASCAR at the quarter pole: Statistics through the first 9 races of the 2019 season
Nine races down, 27 more to go. Saturday night’s race at Richmond marked the conclusion of the first quarter of the 2019 Cup Series season. With an off weekend for Easter coming up on Sunday, now is a good time to take a look at some statistics through the first 25 percent of the year.
- Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. No two teams had ever combined to win the first nine races of the season until 2019. This is, of course, a trend that’s made possible by the expansion of multi-car teams within the Cup Series as Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske have seven cars between both teams.
Five of those seven cars have won races in 2019. Only Ryan Blaney and Erik Jones are winless. And despite the domination of JGR and Penske this season, the five winners in 2019 match the number of winners through the first nine races in 2018.
- Not only does Kyle Busch have an average finish of 3.9 and leads the points standings by 34 points, he’s the only driver to finish in the top 10 in all nine races so far this season. Teammate Denny Hamlin has eight top-10 finishes while Kevin Harvick has seven.
- Busch has 20 playoff points, the most any driver has had through the first nine races of the season.
- Brad Keselowski has led the most laps of anyone (609). Busch is second with 599 laps led. Eight drivers have led over 100 laps so far this season.
- Hamlin is not among those eight drivers. He’s led 97 laps. And has two wins.
- Hamlin is also the series’ best qualifier. He not only has an average starting position of 7.9, he improves upon that on a weekly basis with an average finish of 5.6.
- Alex Bowman and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are qualifying well. And don’t have the finishes to back up those qualifying results. Bowman has an average starting position of 13.8 and has an average finish of 18.3. Stenhouse’s average start is 13th but his average finish is 17.1.
- Bowman leads an inauspicious group of drivers who haven’t finished in the top 10 this season. Joining him in the no-top-10 club (among full-time drivers) are Matt DiBenedetto, Bubba Wallace, David Ragan, Daniel Hemric, Corey LaJoie, Matt Tifft and Landon Cassill.
- Want to know how much it matters to avoid bad finishes? Chase Elliott has one top-five finish and two top 10s. He’s 10th in the standings. Erik Jones has two top-five finishes and three top 10s. He’s 17th, 55 points behind Elliott.
- While Kyle Busch is making up seven positions per race, his brother is the best in the Cup Series at improving throughout the race. Kurt Busch’s average start is 18.1 and his average finish is 8.9.
- Six different full-time drivers have failed to finish two races so far this season. Eleven drivers have been running at the finish of every race.
- Both Hamlin and Kyle Busch have completed every one of the 3,045 laps run so far this season. Joey Logano has only failed to complete two laps and Ryan Newman is next by being just four laps off the pace through 2019.
- Newman moved from Richard Childress Racing to Roush Fenway Racing in the offseason. He’s 15th in the points standings, two spots ahead of where he was at this point with RCR in 2018.
- Daniel Suarez has made an even bigger jump from year-to-year. Suarez was 27th in the standings with JGR a year ago through nine races. He’s 12th in 2019.
- Jimmie Johnson has led 64 laps in 2019. He led all of 40 laps in 2018.
- DiBenedetto hasn’t led any laps since he led 49 laps in the Daytona 500. He’s 24th in the standings with no top-10 finishes and has an average finish of 22.6 in his first season with Leavine Family Racing. A year ago at this time, DiBenedetto was 29th in the standings with Go-Fas Racing.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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