The season is just upon for 2019 but before we rev things up and get going full bore with the Clash and the Daytona 500, let us take a look back at the Silly Season happenings since the end of the 2018 season last November. For those unaccustomed to hearing the phrase “Silly Season” it’s NASCAR’s version of free agency and just like other sports, also involves changes to the coaching staffs a.k.a. Crew Chiefs and Car Chiefs and pit crew changes.

News and Notes

Furniture Row is No More – It was big news at the end of last season and Dan and I talked about it quite a bit in the podcasts last year but it did come to fruition after the Homestead-Miami race in the season finale which left a bunch of people looking for new teams and new work.

Ford Mustang Has Arrived – The Ford Fusion has been the body style of choice for the Ford teams for the last seven years, but starting in 2019 there will be a new body style in the garage area…the Mustang. The Fusion has been a stable car for the Ford teams to race with the last several years, and in 2018 may have had it’s best year on the track while winning the Manufacturer Championship as well as having one of their drivers, Joey Logano, win the Monster Energy Cup Series Championship, but with Ford making changes to their model lineup, it is time for a change. Last year the Chevy teams unveiled the Camaro body and now Ford is countering with the Mustang, but that change may take some time for the teams to adapt to, like it took Chevy last year.

New Toyota on the Block – Leavine Family Racing is switching manufacturers this year to Toyota from Chevrolet and with that comes a change in alliance from Richard Childress Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing. This will now be the second year in a row that LFR has changed a body style having switched to the Camaro from the Impala last year and now switching to the Camry for 2019. Matt DiBenedetto will drive for them, who will get mentioned more later.

Where Did This Pack Come From? – The 2019 season will see a change to the Aero package that’s in place for most of the races on the schedule. The cars will have horsepower lowered from 750 HP to a target of 550 and they will have changes to the spoilers, spacers, and air ducts which will combine to make tighter packs during the races on tracks longer than 1-mile. The Daytona 500 will run with the traditional restrictor plates in place but the other typical plate races won’t use them (both Talladega races and the second Daytona race). The package utilized this season will be similar to that used in the All-Star race last year.

You Mean You Can’t Cheat and Win? – It was announced a day after the Super Bowl that there was a new set of inspection penalties for the 2019 season. There was a lot of bemoaning the fact that you could cheat and still get credit, to a degree, for a win up through last year and if you cheated it might not be found until Wednesday at the R&D center. That’s no longer the case in 2019. There will be a teardown inspection of the cars at the track following the conclusion of the race in which the first place, second place, and a random car will be taken to the at-track inspection center and if the winning car is deemed to have failed the inspection, in a major way, they can be disqualified from the race, the win taken away and they will be given a 40th place finish with everyone else moving up a spot. So up until 90 minutes to two hours after the races, the positions may change.

On The Move For 2019

Drivers

Martin Truex Jr. (#78 to #19) – Truex is joining the Joe Gibbs Racing team after spending the last several seasons with their affiliated team in Furniture Row. Clearly with the latter closing down, he was going to need a new ride and when JGR didn’t re-up the contract for Daniel Suarez, the 19-car came open. This really isn’t a massive move in terms of equipment since he’s already been in a Toyota for awhile and the 78-team used all the same stuff as JGR too, the change however comes in his personal life as he will be living and based in the Charlotte area instead of Denver. Even his sponsor (Bass Pro Shops) is the same in 2019. Now he gets an up close and personal look at what exactly it is that Kyle Busch and company do on a week-in-and-week-out basis which could make the competition between him and the 18-car that much tighter.

Daniel Suarez (#19 to #41) – The rumors had been persistent for much of the season that Suarez wouldn’t be returning to the JGR stable following 2018…and those rumors turned out to be true. The young driver had some ups with JGR but mostly was a disappointment and now moves onto to the Stewart-Haas Racing team as the veteran Kurt Busch vacated his seat in the four-car team. The change will give Suarez a fresh start and a new set of teammates, but it will also force him to learn the ins-and-outs of a new manufacturer as he switches from Toyota to Ford. Not only is it a new manufacturer but it is also in a year of a body switch with the new Mustangs coming in (along with the rules package change) and so it may take him a bit to get going with the new team as the engineers and car chiefs and drivers all try and sort out the aerodynamics of the new body.

Kurt Busch (#41 to #1) – Busch’s contract was up at the end of 2018 and the folks at Stewart-Haas Racing decided not to renew it and so now he’s on to another team. The older Busch brother is taking over for the departed Jamie McMurray, who is now on the Fox broadcast crew, and will now be racing with Kyle Larson (#42) for Chip Ganassi Racing. The run at SHR for Busch was a productive one and he should be able to parlay that experience into making Chip Ganassi a better team and but will have to adjust to being in a Chevy instead of a Ford to really make the most of his 1-car team.

Ryan Newman (#31 to #6) - Newman’s run at Richard Childress Racing has come to an end with this move after it ended on a tad of a sour note. Newman was getting audibly frustrated toward the end of last year and now he will try and help a team that hasn’t been relevant in a year and a half be relevant again. Before that can happen he will have to get used to a new Crew Chief (mentioned below) and get used to a different manufacturer in switching from Chevy to Ford this season. It may take some time before the results start coming in for the veteran driver.

Matt DiBenedetto (#32 to #95) – One of our favorite budget-friendly plays the past couple of seasons is now getting a better ride for 2019 and beyond as he moves to the Leavine Family Racing garage. The popular, and respected driver, managed three top-10 finishes in the last two seasons in the 32-car, far out-producing the equipment and thus giving hope that better car, and a top-notch affiliation, will help his results in the near future. As mentioned above, this is the second year in a row that LFR is switching bodies as they switched to the Camaro in 2018 and now switching to Toyota and the Camry giving them some experience at it. DiBenedetto is a nice get for the one-car race team.

Corey LaJoie (#72 to #32) – The part-time role at TriStar Motorsports in the 72-car has now translated to a full-time ride going forward for another of our favorite budget-plays. In his 55 starts in the MENCS his best finish is 11th in last July’s Daytona race. Not a big jump in results should be expected but he does have some talent and the former driver of the 32-car did manage three top-10s in it.

Rookie Drivers

Daniel Hemric (#21 Xfinity RCR to #8 MENCS RCR) – Hemric is older than a lot of the recent rookies have been at 27 years old, but that’s mainly because there hasn’t really been a seat open for him when he was able to move up. Now he gets his chance though. If the car number he’s in sounds foreign to you…it’s the 31-car from a year ago. RCR has decided to bring back Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s old number (they still owned the number from the DEI days) and so there won’t be a 31- car on the track this year. In the last two seasons at the Xfinity level, Hemric has posted 23 top-five finishes but no wins in 66 starts in that span. Clearly he’s got the talent to be in the Cup series and he’s familiar with the organization so he will be a top contender for the Sunoco Rookie of the Year.

Matt Tifft (#2 Xfinity RCR to #36 MENCS Front Row Motorsports) – Tifft made more news a couple of years ago for the brain surgery he had to remove a tumor rather than the racing career he was building. Now that he’s recovered, he’s been putting his talents on show with two playoff seasons in the last two years at Xfinity. In 66 races in that time, he’s posted five top-fives and 32 top-10s but no wins. The 36-car team is a new one specially created for Matt Tifft using the charter bought from the defunct Furniture Row team and it brings Front Row Motorsports to a three-car team along with teammates David Ragan and Michael McDowell. Tifft is probably the third-ranked contender for the Sunoco Rookie of they Year award of this group.

Ryan Preece (#18 Xfinity JGR to #47 MENCS JTG Daugherty Racing) – Preece was in the 18-car part-time last year but drove it to two wins in convincing fashion, which vaulted him up the boards for a move to the highest-level of the sport. The talks that A.J. Allmendinger would move on from the MENCS made the 47-car open for Preece to snag. Overall Preece has quite a bit of talent with nine top-fives in 19 Xfinity races, not including the two wins in that same span, and the 47-car has had some decent speed in the past even if the results haven’t always shown it. He and Hemric should be the top contenders for ROTY voting.

Crew Chiefs

Chad Knaus (#48 to #24) – It was a well-publicized divorce of sorts for Knaus and Jimmie Johnson after 17 years together and seven championships. Knaus is staying in house at Hendrick Motorsports and simply switching to the 24-car team of William Byron in an attempt to get the young talent to harness his potential. It will be a custom-built team around Knaus this year and so there could be some hiccups along the way as the communication in-race gets worked through and Byron and his Crew Chief get to know each other.

Kevin Meendering (#1 JR Motorsports Xfinity to #48 Hendrick MENCS) – Meendering has spent the last three years being the Crew Chief for Elliott Sadler in the Xfinity series on a dominating JR Motorsports team. Now he gets to replace Knaus as only the second Crew Chief Jimmie Johnson will have in his entire Cup series career. There are things to change in the 48-team garage seeing as how the team was winless in 2018, the first time in 16 seasons, and the time to impressive the new sponsor, Ally Financial, is now in 2019. Like all of these changes, communication will be a key thing to sort out early in the year but it’s not like this is some newbie driver here, he’s one of the best to ever do it.

Chris Gabehart (#19 JGR Xfinity to #11 JGR MENCS) – Another veteran driver seeing an end to a more than decade-long win streak was Denny Hamlin in 2018. Now he gets a new man atop the pit box to try and right the ship for the 11-car team. Gabehart had a successful run in the Xfintiy series with nine wins in the last three years for the organization and so he hopes to keep that success running in the Monster Energy series. The 11-car was near the front later in the season and so if he goes off of those notes, there really shouldn’t be a gap in performance from Hamlin and company.

Cole Pearn (#78 to #19) – Technically this is a car and team switch, but in reality he is staying within an organization he’s had experience with and staying with the same driver. As Furniture Row Racing is now shuttered, Pearn joined his driver, Martin Truex Jr., in the move to the mothership, JGR, in Charlotte. With them being in the same equipment and in the same organization they’ve had an affiliation with for the last few years, there really shouldn’t be a beat missed in this one. Expect MTJ and Pearn to be competing for multiple wins once more this year.

Mike Wheeler (#11 to #95) – Wheeler had a nice three-season run with the 11-team and Denny Hamlin before it went south in 2018 to the tune of zero wins for the first time in 12 years for Hamlin. The move, however, doesn’t really even take Wheeler away from the JGR family as the 95-car of Leavine Family Racing is now an affiliate of JGR. Working with Matt DiBenedetto should give him a talented driver to continue to work with and some very solid finishes should result.

Danny Stockman Jr. (#21 RCR Xfinity to #3 RCR MENCS) – Stockman was the Crew Chief for Daniel Hemric the last two years as he went to the Championship 4 in the 21-car. Now he will be reunited with Austin Dillon in the 3-car at Richard Childress Racing on the Cup side. Stockman and Dillon have a very good history as Stockman was on the box for Dillon’ Camping World Truck series championship and his Xfinity series championship as well. Not saying a championship will follow for the 3-team, however they are clearly very good together which is what Dillon needs after winning the Daytona 500 in 2018, but only garnering three other top-10s after that.

Scott Graves (#19 to #6) – Graves was the main Crew Chief for Suarez in the Cup series but now gets a chance to head back to Roush Fenway and work with Ryan Newman in 2019. Graves isn’t a slouch either as Chris Buescher and Suarez both have won Xfinity titles under his tutelage on the box. Newman still has the competitive spirit and is still one of the hardest drivers to pass on the track, maybe Graves will be able to get him nearer to the front more often in 2019.