Three races. Three series. Three new champions.
The 2021 NASCAR season, at least the on-track action (Silly Season will have at least a couple of twists and turns, I am sure), is over. Each of the three national series crowned a first-time champion. For two, their victories were unexpected. For the third, his win was needed to justify the playoff format. In this column, I will take a look at all three NASCAR Champions.
Camping World Truck Series Champion: Ben Rhodes
For most of the season, there was John Hunter Nemechek and then there was everyone else, to hear the media talk. Well, there was Nemechek and Kyle Busch and then a bunch of also-rans that didn’t really count for anything, according to some media types. Meanwhile, Rhodes had won both the oval and the road course at Daytona to start the season but then settled in for a solid season.
Running for Thorsports, one can’t exactly point to Rhodes as being the underdog. Still, it sure seemed as if most people expected the other three contenders to be chasing after Nemechek. As it turned out, Nemechek had an incident on the first corner of the first lap and spent the bulk of the race trying to get back on the lead lap. He did eventually make it back to the lead lap and finished eighth but was
Some will probably point to Nemechek getting taken out early as evidence that the current playoff system doesn’t work. I look at it as evidence that the system can – and often does – provide fans with excitement down to the final race, and often the final lap. Under the old point system, Nemechek probably could have pitted on lap 6, taken his car to the garage and just waited for the checkered flag to pick up his championship trophy.
Zane Smith, for the second year in a row, came up one spot short to winning the title. This year, however, was much more bittersweet for Smith. Even running for a team like GMS Racing, Smith probably came in the underdog, having won at Martinsville to overcome a points deficit to make the Final Four. However, maybe next year (depending on where he ends up), people will start seeing him a perennial playoff contender.
Of course, with a championship under his belt, the same should now be said for Rhodes. Maybe because I’ve been watching him for most of his career but it just seems like he’s way too young to have snagged himself a championship. But that’s on me and I can also look at him and say that this is a driver who is passionate about NASCAR. A couple of years ago, the NASCAR world saw him distraught after an engine issue cost him an assured win. At that moment, I was like “this is someone who I want to see win in this series because he has set a high standard for himself. This isn’t somebody who’s just killing time until a big Cup team comes calling!”
That makes me wonder where Rhodes’ career will take him. Is he five years away from racing in the Cup series for Stewart-Haas or Penske or is he, like his teammate Matt Crafton, a Truck Series lifer? And there’s nothing wrong with the latter. Crafton is one of several drivers for whom Trucks are their passion and they don’t need a Cup ride to feel fulfilled in NASCAR. I could certainly see Rhodes transitioning to a veteran role in this series, like Crafton (to say nothing of another teammate Johnny Sauter) has become.
I guess we’ll find out. Meanwhile, Rhodes gave us a memorable post-race press conference.
Xfinity Series Champion: Daniel Hemric
Remember how, earlier, I said that the current playoff format provides excitement throughout the entire season, right down to the last lap? Take the Dead On Tools 250 from Phoenix as a prime example. Daniel Hemric and Austin Cindric racing, never mind for the race win but for the championship, door to door coming out of Turn 4 on the final lap.
Daniel Hemric, the proverbial “always a bridesmaid never a bride”, crossed the line by three one-hundredths of a second before Cindric did. He won the first national series race of his career and won the Xfinity Championship.
And in doing so, he became the second driver of the weekend to upset the pre-race favourites (Cindric and AJ Allmendinger) to win the title.
I was surprised to see Hemric win. I literally assumed he would get nipped at the line by Cindric and have to wait until 2022 when he went to Kaulig Racing to get his first win. Of course, even since his tenure at Joe Gibbs Racing began, it seemed as if Hemric was just there to run up front, lead a few laps and then, as the race wound down, would basically be blocking for whichever Cup guy (or Ty Gibbs) was driving the #54 so they would win.
My own conspiracy theories aside, I believe that Hemric, running for one of the best teams in Xfinity, is going to be a dominant driver in 2022. I’ll go on record right now in saying that Ty Gibbs will, of course, have to be the next Kyle Busch in terms of media coverage and bias but Hemric should be considered a contender for next year’s championship, even before the first competitive lap is run at Daytona.
If I’m being totally honest, I was rooting for Noah Gragson and Allmendinger ahead of Hemric during the race, but it was great to see him finally get that long-awaited win, one that I think is going to be the turning point in his career. He ran for RCR in Cup but I think when he returns in a few years, Hemric is going to be a different driver not only in terms of experience but in terms of confidence.
Cup Series Champion: Kyle Larson
In 2017, Martin Truex Jr. made his way through the playoffs based primarily off his stage points of the regular season (well, plus the genius of his Canadian crew chief Cole Pearn). I remember writing in an earlier version of Track Talk that if Truex didn’t win the championship, it would lead to many a naysayer pointing to the turn of events as proof that the new play-off system didn’t work.
As we approached the final race of the 2021 Cup season, I saw a lot of similarities between Truex in 2017 and Larson this season. He was, for all intent and purposes, the most dominant driver of the Cup series. (Some will talk about his dirt racing as further evidence to what a great season he had. I don’t count Kyle Busch’s Xfinity or Truck wins so I’m not counting any Sprint Car races for Larson.) As much as Denny Hamlin may have been consistent, he never approached Larson’s numbers in terms of wins.
If Larson had come up short to Hamlin, Elliott or Truex in that final race, there would have been many who would have used it to suggest that the old point system was much better as it rewarded the most dominant driver.
My response: 1985.
In 1985, Bill Elliott won 11 races. Darrell Waltrip won just three. A quick Google search – or even a basic knowledge of NASCAR history – would reveal that Elliott won the 1988 NASCAR Cup Championship, not the 1985 Cup. That went to Waltrip.
I bring this up to demonstrate that no matter what form the playoffs take, there will be years when the most dominant driver wins and there will be years when someone else steps up and takes the title.
Having said all that and turning my attention back to 2021, I was not cheering for Larson to win the Cup Championship. He’s rubbed me the wrong way a few times. First with his “Sorry NASCAR, (the Chili Bowl) is the race I really wanted to win!” remark in early 2020 – which, of course brought out all the Sprint Car fans to crap all over NASCAR, and then suggesting that NASCAR fans just watch for the wrecks after expressing his displeasure in hearing Atlanta would be repaved and reconfigured. (Larson was joined by Rodney Childers, Kevin Harvick’s crew chief, in making such remarks reach the public.)
Earlier, I talked about Ben Rhodes being passionate about NASCAR and the Truck Series. I don’t see the same in Larson. Yes, he enjoys racing but I get the sense that NASCAR is just his day job, the grind he has to put up with to earn a pay cheque so he can go Sprint Car racing on his off time.
I will say that I saw the emotion in him after winning the Championship and I’ll give him props for giving his crew the credit for getting him the win. It’s possible that, after everything he’s been through over the last year and a half, he’s come to realize just how important NASCAR is. Maybe his setbacks caused him to grow up. I’ll wait and see.
I was, of course, cheering for Chase Elliott but it wasn’t his day. There were times throughout the race that I allowed myself to think “Well, maybe?” I had little expectations that the Joe Gibbs cars were going to take home the title.
First of all, anyone else recognize just how much of a d##k Hamlin was for the week leading up to the season finale? I know most of it was his continued disrespect for the Chase Elliott fanbase so maybe I am being biased. Still, I’m not sure why this continued bashing of NASCAR fans by NASCAR drivers and crew chiefs continues to be a thing. It’s fine to praise your own fans as “the best fans in the world” but why you think bashing other fans is going to win them over is beyond me, but that’s more of a society-at-large issue. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned, treat someone like an enemy, they don’t become your ally.)
As it was, Hamlin – for the second championship race in recent memory – had the fourth best car of the championship four. As for Truex – well, I’m of the opinion (and again maybe just a conspiracy theory) – that until Busch wins a third championship, JGR will not allow Truex to win a second and be considered on the same level. Of course, with the amount of resources that will be directed towards Ty Gibbs breezing through his first full season in Xfinity, that may change in 2022. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
So what do you think? Should I go ahead and make a way-too-early prediction for each championship in 2022. Sure, why not?
Trucks: John Hunter Nemechek
Xfinity: Ty Gibbs
Cup: Kevin Harvick
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