In any performance and results-based industry, continuity is usually king. But oftentimes, continuity isn't always possible. People and teams underperform, get replaced or go elsewhere. And even the best performers reach the end of the line, step away and need to be replaced.
Each winter, countless mechanics, shop workers and other crewmembers across the NASCAR industry load up their toolboxes and switch from one team to another, as do the drivers who serve as the stars of the sport and the crew chiefs responsible for the performances of their cars and crews. In 2024, a fair share of seats have changed hands both behind the wheel and atop the pit box, whether it be due to the exit of aging veterans or a team that underachieved in 2023 looking for a boost.
Here is a look at all of the major lineup changes in the NASCAR Cup Series this season, including both new drivers and new crew chiefs.
No. 2 -- Austin Cindric, Team Penske Ford (Crew Chief: Brian Wilson)
This is one of two crew chief changes that occurred toward the tail end of the 2023 season, as Austin Cindric and Harrison Burton's teams traded crew chiefs after both missed the playoffs amid dreadful second seasons in Cup. In Cindric's case, the 2022 Daytona 500 champion and Cup Rookie of the Year was reunited with Brian Wilson, who guided Cindric to 13 wins and a championship in the Xfinity Series.
After two sixth-place finishes in the first six races of the 2023 season, Cindric's performance under previous crew chief Jeremy Bullins fell off a cliff. From Richmond in April all the way until Daytona in July, Cindric managed just one finish inside the top 10 and had 12 finishes of 25th or worse. By comparison, the switch to Wilson -- combined with improved performance for Team Penske as a whole -- seemed to lead to some improvement in the final six races of the year.
Cindric earned his lone top-five finish of the season at Talladega in April, then followed it up with a 12th-place finish at Homestead and a ninth-place finish at Martinsville. Consistent runs like that should help Cindric improve from a poor average finish of 21.6 back to his rookie-year mark of 16.3.
No. 4 -- Josh Berry (R), Stewart-Haas Racing Ford (Crew Chief: Rodney Childers)
After 10 years, one championship and many race wins in between, the end of the 2023 season marked the end of an era for Stewart-Haas Racing's No. 4 team with the retirement of future NASCAR Hall of Famer Kevin Harvick. In 2024, their post-Harvick era begins with the hiring of Josh Berry, who will take over the seat and run for Rookie of the Year.
One element of SHR's hire of Berry is that it pairs one dye-in-the-wool short track racer with another. Berry, who earned his way to NASCAR's top level by excelling in late models and winning the NASCAR Weekly Series championship in 2020, will be paired with crew chief Rodney Childers, himself a former short track racer who has maintained very deep ties to the grassroots level around Virginia and the Carolinas.
After becoming a championship contender in the Xfinity Series, the 33-year-old Berry demonstrated his aptitude for Cup cars in 12 starts last season, almost all of which came in substitute duty at Hendrick Motorsports. Berry filled in for both Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman following their respective injuries, earning three top-10 finishes including a second at Richmond.
Despite the organizational struggles of Stewart-Haas Racing as a whole in 2023, Childers' No. 4 team has remained the strongest part of the chain. Although Harvick missed out on winning in his final season, he did record six top fives and 14 top 10s with Childers calling the shots.
No. 10 -- Noah Gragson, Stewart-Haas Racing Ford (Crew Chief: Drew Blickensderfer)
In addition to finding a replacement for the retiring Harvick, Stewart-Haas Racing also dealt with the departure of Aric Almirola, who left the team and has stepped back from full-time Cup racing into a part-time ride with Joe Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity Series. In his place, SHR has tabbed Noah Gragson to take over the No. 10, giving him a second chance in the Cup after his rookie season turned into a complete disaster.
After achieving stardom in the Xfinity Series, the flamboyant and somewhat mercurial Gragson found himself in a less-than-ideal situation in Cup, as Legacy Motor Club quickly achieved lame-duck status at Chevrolet upon announcing they would move to Toyota for 2024. Save for a Talladega race he had a chance to win, Gragson ran poorly with just one finish inside the top 15, had six DNFs, and missed a race with a concussion suffered in a crash at Gateway.
Even before Gragson ultimately resigned from the team following a NASCAR suspension for inappropriate social media activity, a crisis of confidence for a driver who had taken stock car racing by storm at the Xfinity level seemed to be part of the issue.
"You don't know where you're at. You're sitting at the very end of the garage in points and like, 'Damn, I suck,'" Gragson said at Nashville in June, when asked how having the second opinion of substitute driver Grant Enfinger helped Gragson's team after Gateway.
Fast racecars will allow Gragson to be more confident, and fast racecars are what crew chief Drew Blickensderfer offers on superspeedways. The two-time Daytona 500 champion crew chief is always at his best setting up cars at drafting tracks, as evidenced by the 100 laps Almirola led at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta with two poles and a best finish of third. Blickensderfer's results have traditionally been more uneven at other tracks, but he seemed to have a great setup for Martinsville -- where Almirola finished sixth and second last year.
No. 16 -- AJ Allmendinger and Co., Kaulig Racing Chevrolet (Crew Chief: Travis Mack)
After running the full season in 2023 and winning at the Charlotte Roval, 2024 will see AJ Allmendinger scale back to a part-time Cup schedule while returning to a full-time slate of Xfinity Series racing. That'll open up the seat of the No. 16 for multiple other drivers to be determined, but a much more consequential change for this team involves the top of the pit box.
Kaulig Racing announced in early January that they have hired Travis Mack as both crew chief of the No. 16 team and the organization's new technical director of its Cup teams. Mack joins Kaulig from Trackhouse Racing, where he crew chiefed Daniel Suarez for the past three seasons and proved essential to building the organization into a contender.
Coming up through the ranks of Hendrick Motorsports, Mack has a proven track record of improving the performance of each team he joins. Before overseeing Suarez's breakout as a winning Cup driver, Mack led Xfinity Series journeyman Michael Annett to the best success of his career, including his lone win at Daytona in 2019.
No. 21 -- Harrison Burton, Wood Brothers Racing Ford (Crew Chief: Jeremy Bullins)
On the other end of the Penske-Wood Brothers crew chief swap toward the end of 2023 was Harrison Burton, who inherited Jeremy Bullins ahead of a pivotal third year for him in the Cup. Burton has flashed at times as the driver of the Wood Brothers No. 21, but the results have not been there with just one top-five and four top-10s in two full seasons.
With the Wood Brothers being deeply tied to Penske, improved performance for Penske should mean the Wood Brothers getting cars that are capable of much more. For his part, Bullins has earned nine Cup victories, led Brad Keselowski to a second-place finish in the 2020 championship standings, and oversaw Burtons's three top-20 finishes with a best of 15th at Martinsville in the final 10 races of last year.
No. 31 -- Daniel Hemric, Kaulig Racing Chevrolet (Crew Chief: Trent Owens)
After two full seasons driving for Kaulig in the Xfinity Series, Daniel Hemric takes over the No. 31 Chevrolet in 2024, bringing him back to the Cup Series full-time for the first time since he won Rookie of the Year honors in 2019. Hemric had one top five, two top 10s and a pole in his maiden season, but was dumped after one season in favor of Tyler Reddick after a 25th-place finish in the championship standings.
Hemric got the chance to run eight Cup races for Kaulig in 2022 as part of a driver rotation in the No. 16, earning a ninth-place finish at Fontana (where he rallied from multiple laps down). The ding on Hemric's NASCAR career has always been a lack of wins -- his triumph in the 2021 Xfinity Series championship race at Phoenix, which also earned him the series title, is his lone victory in any of NASCAR's top three series -- but he has given himself many opportunities to win races and otherwise been rock solid throughout his Xfinity and Truck Series careers.
Hemric will be paired with veteran crew chief Trent Owens, who has been with Kaulig the past two seasons and earned four top fives and nine top 10s with Justin Haley behind the wheel.
No. 42 -- John Hunter Nemechek, Legacy Motor Club Toyota (Crew Chief: Ben Beshore)
In 2024, the No. 42 Legacy Motor Club team will have a third full-time driver in as many years of the team's existence. This time it'll be John Hunter Nemechek, who returns to the Cup Series full-time for the first time since running for Rookie of the Year in 2020.
The son of longtime Cup driver Joe Nemechek (and named for the late John Nemechek, who raced in the Craftsman Truck Series), John Hunter flashed with three top-10 finishes while driving for Front Row Motorsports, but returned to the Truck Series level in 2021 to work his way back up through Toyota's system. He did so successfully, dominating with seven wins in over two seasons in Trucks before winning seven times in the Xfinity Series last year with Joe Gibbs Racing. Despite his success and two appearances in the Championship 4 across those series, Nemechek came short of winning a championship on his path back to the Cup.
Nemechek will be joined by Ben Beshore, his crew chief from the Xfinity level, and got a head start with his new team in a lone start late last season at Homestead, where he finished 32nd after a crash.
No. 51 -- Justin Haley, Rick Ware Racing Ford (Crew Chief: Chris Lawson)
One of the biggest surprises of last year's Silly Season was the announcement that Justin Haley would leave Kaulig Racing in favor of Rick Ware Racing, a move that puzzled many at first glance. On the surface, going from Kaulig to Rick Ware's team seemed like a step down for the 24-year-old Haley, but further examination suggested a growth opportunity for all parties involved.
After building a reputation for bringing field filler and rent-a-rides to the racetrack, the Next Gen car has seen Rick Ware Racing gradually improve its program in the Next Gen era while also catching onto the rising tide of RFK Racing through a technical alliance. Now, Haley gives them a promising young driver of a higher caliber than any the team has had before -- Haley has one win, five top fives and 13 top 10s as a Cup driver, and last season almost won at the Chicago Street Course before finishing second.
Haley's crew chief will be Chris Lawson, who earns a call up to the Cup Series after establishing himself as one of NASCAR's most promising young crew chiefs in the Craftsman Truck Series. Lawson won six races as the crew chief for Front Row Motorsports' No. 38 team and the 2022 championship with Zane Smith.
No. 71 -- Zane Smith (R), Spire Motorsports Chevrolet (Crew Chief: Stephen Doran)
As part of their continued growth, Trackhouse Racing announced in September that they have signed 2022 Craftsman Truck Series champion Zane Smith, who will run for Rookie of the Year in Cup behind the wheel of the No. 71 for Spire Motorsports. Smith's ride is a collaboration between Trackhouse and Spire while Trackhouse sets up the infrastructure to field a third Cup car beginning in 2025.
Smith comes to the Cup with not only his Truck Series pedigree -- nine career wins and a championship -- but also some quality experience in nine career Cup starts. Most of Smith's Cup experience came last year behind the wheel of the No. 38 for Front Row Motorsports, where he impressed many with a 10th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600.
Smith's crew chief will be Stephen Doran, who has taken his first Cup crew chief job after serving as a longtime engineer on Stewart-Haas Racing's No. 4 team.
No. 77 -- Carson Hocevar (R), Spire Motorsports Chevrolet (Crew Chief: Luke Lambert)
Spire Motorsports doubles up on rookies in 2023, tabbing Carson Hocevar to take over the No. 77 Chevrolet that was driven by Ty Dillon in 2023. Getting the No. 77 to perform on the same level as the team's No. 7 has been one of Spire's objectives, and the hiring of Hocevar as well as new crew chief Luke Lambert is a potential big step toward doing just that.
A star driver in the Craftsman Truck Series, the soon-to-be 21-year-old Hocevar proved to be a revelation and a quick study in Cup cars in nine starts last year. Many of those starts came with Lambert at Legacy Motor Club, where Hocevar earned five top-20 finishes in eight starts including an 11th-place run at Bristol. All that came while Hocevar won a career-high four races in the Truck Series before finishing fourth in the final standings.
Lambert spent many seasons as the crew chief for Richard Childress Racing's No. 31 team, working most of those years with Ryan Newman. The pair only won once together at Phoenix in 2017, but Lambert did oversee Newman's playoff run to a second-place finish in the championship standings in 2014.
No. 99 -- Daniel Suarez, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet (Crew Chief: Matt Swiderski)
The departure of Travis Mack to Kaulig turned into an outright crew chief swap, as Matt Swiderski will take over the pit box for Suarez in 2024. Mack leaving certainly hurts Suarez, who experienced the best success of his Cup career while paired with Mack, but Swiderski has a decent resume of recent success all his own.
Coming to Cup through Richard Childress Racing and Team Penske's Xfinity teams, Swiderski called the shots for Kaulig Racing's No. 16 team from 2021 onward, earning two wins with AJ Allmendinger along with nine top fives and 20 top 10s. Both of those wins came on road courses, which happen to be a strength of Suarez's -- His lone Cup victory came at Sonoma in 2022, and one of his best runs of the entire 2023 season was a third-place finish at Indianapolis where he led six laps from the pole.
Suarez's 2023 season was something of a step back from his career year in 2022, as he missed the playoffs, earned three top-five and 10 top-10 finishes, and saw his average finish drop from 16.5 to 19.0.
