The question was simple. The answers revealing.
Cup drivers were asked this week: “What does the new year mean to you?”
The responses provided a peek into their mind as the start of the season nears.
The most popular answer was “reset,” but even many of those responses provided a level of depth. Other answers were different and telling. Here are some of those responses:
1. Bubba Wallace: Redemption
It was the second word Bubba Wallace uttered to the question, saying the new year meant “opportunity … redemption” for him.
Although Wallace didn’t win last year, he made the playoffs for the first time at 23XI Racing and tied his career high of five top-five finishes and 10 top-10 results.
So … redemption?
When asked about using that word in his response, Wallace talked about watching himself in a 2014 NASCAR Truck race at Texas.
“We were running second, trying to pass Kyle (Busch) and we blew up and that ended our title chances,” Wallace told NBC Sports. “It was like ‘d —-, crazy,’ but what I was watching there was a confident Bubba.”
He said he saw his younger self “ripping the top” lane at Texas and “making moves” throughout the event.
“I feel like I’m kind of getting 2014 back, which is good for me, good for everybody,”
But that same track led him back to using the word redemption in what this year means to him.
Last year at Texas, Wallace led going into the final restart in the Cup playoff race. A victory would move him into the Round of 8.
Wallace finished third.
“I choked,” he told NBC Sports’ Kim Coon after that race.
“It still pisses me off — in a good way, it motivates me to go out and do it,” Wallace said this week of not winning that Texas race. “So that’s a little bit of redemption.”
Then he looks back to all of last season.
“I gave up a lot of stage wins,” said Wallace, who did not win a stage in 2023. “I gave up a lot of race wins last year. So just a matter of putting it all together and redeeming ourselves.”
He said a key for him this season will be his approach.
“Having a different outlook, different mindset coming into it,” Wallace said. “You know, not trying too hard. Let everything kind of naturally come to you. Look at what we did last year. It was really, really positive. … The start of last year I kind of chased what we we were trying to do.
“We ended 2022 solid. I was trying to chase that and bring that in and not like in a natural way and there was no change to the start of our season. It’s been the same for the last three years, where, very lackluster start, one or two top fives and that’s it.”
Wallace has had no more than two top 10s in the first 10 races of the season in each of the past three years. His average finish in the first 10 races the past three years has been:
21.3 in 2021
20.6 in 2022
20.3 in 2023
Wallace has scored 87% of his top 10s over the past three seasons after the 10th race of the year.
“We know we can run in the top five, top 10 easily,” he said. “If you look at the second half of every season. It’s just a matter of showing up, just having fun and appreciating where you’re at. If it’s your day, it’s your day. If it’s not, then it’s not.”
2. Chase Elliott — Back to work
Chase Elliott’s response to what a new year means to him is striking.
“I think when you’ve been doing it for, you know, this will be year nine …”
Wait a minute.
This is the kid NASCAR fans saw stand with his father Bill in victory lane at Indianapolis?
This is the kid fans cheered to the Xfinity title in his rookie season?
This is the kid fans celebrated when he won a Cup title?
He’s about to start his ninth full-time season in Cup? It doesn’t seem possible, yet it is.
“Time has certainly flown by,” he said.
Coming off his first winless Cup season since 2017, Elliott is ready for this year.
“I feel like it’s kind of just business as usual and an opportunity to start fresh,” the 28-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver said of a new season. “Everybody’s kind of on equal wavelengths to start the year, and you just hope that you fire off good and have a nice start and try to get in the routine of getting back on the road and getting back in the car.”
Elliott said he’s good to go for the Feb. 4 Clash at the Coliseum after shoulder surgery in November to address what he called then an “old injury.” Elliott said he continues to rehabilitate the shoulder.
This will be the third year of the Gen-7 car and Elliott said there remain things to learn about it.
“I think since the new car has been implemented, there are things that carry forward,” he told NBC Sports. “There are going to be components and the different feel in the car. All those little things, like they’re not just going to go away.
“It’s not like the season was six months ago. It was like two months back. … So yes, things are going to change but there are going to be areas that we feel that we need to be better in that are going to still be real. They’re not just going to disappear.”
3. Harrison Burton — time to perform
Harrison Burton understands what is at stake in his third season with Wood Brothers Racing.
The 23-year-old has struggled in Cup with one top-five finish and four top 10s in 73 career starts. He had one top-15 finish in the final 15 races last season.
“It’s obvious that this year is kind of do or die, right? So there’s pressure in that, but there’s also freedom in that,” he said.
How so?
“Knowing that you can go, and as long as you put the right amount of effort in, you can lay your head down at night and know that you put everything into this. So it’s a little bit freeing in a way, like let’s just go and get after it and do what we know we can do.”
Burton knows he can win. He won four Xfinity races in 2020.
“The most fun I’ve ever had in racing is winning races,” Burton told NBC Sports. “It’s what you want to do. I don’t get any enjoyment anymore out of just driving the car, right? I think the competitive part with that is where you get the enjoyment and where you, as a competitor, you rank yourself as a person, as a driver, as everything, off of where that leaderboard says you are.
“When it’s not up at the top, you feel like nothing. You feel horrible. I’ve experienced that side. I’ve experienced winning. So trying to be more on the winning side of things this year, that’s for sure.”
When he’s asked what a new year is for him, he notes it is “a chance to start fresh, especially with our group.”
Crew chief Jeremy Bullins joined the team before the start of the playoffs last year, replacing Brian Wilson, who took Bullins’ spot with Austin Cindric’s team.
Burton called the offseason a good time to “kind of regroup and understand what our goals are and build that as a team. Going into this year, just feeling ready to go get after it. It’s just a renewed sense of excitement for the new year.”
4. Erik Jones — Managing expectations
Erik Jones admits that this is “the most optimistic I’ve been about a Cup season in a while, at least a couple of years.”
He should feel that way. Legacy Motor Club’s move from Chevrolet to Toyota in the offseason should be a step forward for the organization.
Jones also should be optimistic because he made it through last year. A final season before a manufacturer change can prove challenging and it was for Legacy MC. Jones finished a career-worst 27th in points. That was impacted by a 60-point penalty for an infraction at Gateway. Without it, Jones would have been 23rd in points. His previous worst finish in the points was 24th in 2021.
Jones said his optimistic feelings are shared by those at the shop, but he notes that work remains to raise his performance and that of new teammate John Hunter Nemechek.
“I think you guard against … the high expectations,” Jones told NBC Sports. “We have high goals and watermarks but (crew chief Dave Elenz) and I, for sure, have talked about tempering. I think we’re on the same page. We’ve been through manufacturer changes, Dave and I. Not everybody in the company has … and I think keeping everybody grounded and realistic that it is a lot different and hitting the ground running is what we want to do.”
Jones knows that there could be challenges just in all that is new with a manufacturer change, which includes “learning a new system, new simulation. We’re building with (Toyota Racing Development) more in-house, so a lot of processes that are being built out. We have a non-motion sim now but still have to build it out. I was on it the other day and there’s work to be done there to get it better and get it realistic. We have a ton of tools 100%, but it’s taking all these tools and making them work how we need them to.”
But if the year can continue to go as well as it has started for Jones, then look out.
Jones, a Michigan native, is a University of Michigan fan and got to celebrate the team winning its first national championship earlier this month since 1997 — when Jones was less than a year old.
He’s also a Detroit Lions fans and celebrated the team’s first playoff win in 32 years last weekend. He won’t have a chance to go see the Lions play Tampa Bay (3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock) but is hopeful Detroit can make it to the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl will be in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium. Allegiant Air has the stadium’s naming rights and its CEO is Maury Gallagher, who co-owns Legacy MC with Jimmie Johnson.
5. Joey Logano — Pursuing perfection
Two-time champion Joey Logano is emphatic about what a new year means to him.
“Fresh start,” he told NBC Sports. “Fresh start.
“Thank God.”
Logano became the first reigning Cup champion to be eliminated in the opening round of the playoffs last year. He went on to finish 12th in points, snapping his streak of five consecutive top-10 finishes in the points.
Logano won once last year — only the second time in six years he did not win multiple points races in a season.
“You need a reset at times,” he said. “(A new season) kind of gives you a natural reset, which is nice in sports that you get to have that. You don’t get that in every line of business where you can get a clean reset like we get. We use that to our advantage to do things differently and learn from our mistakes and start at zero with everybody else.”
In the past, Logano has come up with a word or phrase to use as a motivator for his team. He’s not ready to share it because he has yet to have that talk with his team but the theme is likely to be about pursuing perfection.
“We know what the numbers are of the best team last year,” Logano told NBC Sports. “As far as numbers they put up on the board: Wins, laps led … all that stuff. So we know where excellence is and we need to pursue that.”
