The Weirdest Thing Each Driver Has Done In 2025 (Pt. 1)
Plus their mid-regular-season/one-third-of-full-season grades
The general feeling among the NASCAR world is that the 2025 season has been disappointing from two major standpoints. Firstly, races at many of NASCAR’s marquee tracks have been disappointing, lacking compelling racing or interesting narratives. Secondly, the big teams are dominating. The second point is undoubtedly true, as Ross Chastain’s Coca Cola 600 win (the 13th race of the year) marked the first win by a non-Big Three team all year.
But the first point is trickier. This hasn’t been a whiz bang operatic season with one shock winner and photo finish after another,1 but even in a season like this, the amount information to parse and stories to tell in just three months of competition have made these poor substacks posts absolutely leaden down with stuff. There are 36 full time drivers and teams, and every single one of them has done at least one really interesting thing. Or they’ve at least driven a fucked up looking car.
So, in an effort to sort through the thousands of laps and dozens of really funny paint schemes, we’re going to go driver by driver and find the funniest or weirdest story about each one this year. We’ll also give them a grade for their season so far. These grades are relative to expectations, meaning if Kyle Larson doesn’t have multiple wins and isn’t leading the points standings, he is a FAILURE. Ty Dillon, meanwhile, merely needs to drive the car forwards instead of backwards and he’s already demonstrating upside.