As “Auld Lang Syne” is played all over the globe this New Year’s Eve, the start of the 2025 NASCAR season is only a little more than a month away.
Every NASCAR team — even those at the top of the totem pole — has at least one area in which they can improve in 2025. Here are New Year’s resolutions for three of the best organizations in the NASCAR Cup Series: Team Penske, Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.
Team Penske: Finding consistent speed
Yes, Penske may have won the championship three years in a row, but the way in which they’ve done it has been rather unconventional. Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney won their titles by catching fire at the end of the season, and while that’s a good thing, it also means that they sacrifice performance throughout the rest of the year.
Logano’s 2024 campaign is arguably the worst season ever out together by a NASCAR champion, and if the team performed to their full potential for 36 weeks, it’d be a much more frequent visitor to victory lane.
With that being said, Penske shouldn’t sweat it if this resolution doesn’t come to fruition, as the team seems to be doing just fine. After all, the championship is the end goal of every organization, no matter how it’s attained.
Hendrick Motorsports: Stepping up in the championship race
This resolution will take 35 weeks to play out, and it’s not at all a guarantee that HMS will have a car competing for the championship at Phoenix. If one of Rick Hendrick’s four entries does happen to make the Championship 4, however, it almost seems imperative that his driver takes home the Bill France Cup.
Over the past three seasons, Hendrick has been home to the winningest driver in NASCAR for that given season (Chase Elliott in 2022, William Byron in 2023, Kyle Larson in 2024) but has yet to take home the championship, despite Elliott and Byron competing for it in 2022 and 2023, respectively. For an organization built by championship trophies, closing the deal in the sport’s second-most important event is a must in 2025.
Joe Gibbs Racing: Getting another car into the Championship 4
Joe Gibbs Racing is in an interesting spot going into 2025. Its most tenured and successful driver in Denny Hamlin hasn’t made the Championship 4 since 2021. Its youngest driver in Ty Gibbs is entering just his third season of Cup Series competition, while Chase Briscoe is entering his first season with JGR.
Christopher Bell — who made the Championship 4 in 2022 and 2023 and was a corner away from doing so again in 2024 — seems to be the team’s best hope at a title in 2025. If Gibbs wants to get back to dominant form, however, its goal should be to put half of its cars into the championship race.
