Four different drivers won the first four races in 2024 — part of a season that had zero back-to-back winners for the first time since 1984, and 18 distinct race winners overall. That latter number was tied (with 2011) for the second-most distinct winners in any season since 2004 — trailing only the first season of the Next Gen car in 2022, when 19 different drivers won races.
Meanwhile, the start of the 2025 season couldn‘t be more different. After William Byron won his second straight Daytona 500, Christopher Bell rattled off a historic streak of three consecutive wins at Atlanta, COTA and Phoenix. Although other drivers have been competitive — Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Austin Cindric have combined to lead more total laps (319) than Bell and Byron (214) — there‘s no question the most dominant drivers, especially at the most important moments of each race, have been the only drivers to win races this year.
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If you look at my rolling driver rankings, the distribution is heavily skewed toward the top duo of No. 1 Bell and No. 2 Byron. Because things have been a bit mixed for other preseason top-10 members (Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Logano, Denny Hamlin, Alex Bowman, etc.) — while Kyle Busch has been the next-best driver by Driver Rating — Bell and Byron have ended up with a huge gap in base predicted performance (independent of track type) versus everyone else.
After four races, the average of Bell’s (109.8) and Byron‘s (109.1) rolling ratings is 109.4, 13.8 points clear from that of No. 3 Blaney (95.6). That‘s the second-widest gap between Nos. 1-2 and No. 3 in the rankings at this stage of a season since 2006: The only wider gap belonged to 2015, when Kevin Harvick (129.9) and Logano (111.5) were well ahead of No. 3 Brad Keselowski (103.6).
(Click here to explore the full chart.)
Harvick was coming off a championship the previous season, and while he didn‘t ultimately repeat in 2015, he won two of the first four races on the calendar, with Logano and Jimmie Johnson splitting the other two. It was early in a highly dominant 2014-2020 run for Harvick in the No. 4 car after leaving Richard Childress Racing for Stewart-Haas Racing, a seven-year stretch during which he handily led the Cup Series in wins (35), top fives (125), top 10s (180) and average Driver Rating (109.6). Not coincidentally, it was also the peak of the sixth-generation car, which lent itself to many of the most top-heavy season starts in the chart above.
The same could not really be said of the Next Gen car — hence, all of those different winners last year. So it‘s surprising to see Bell and Byron pull away from the pack to begin the 2025 season, representing what might be the first true powerhouse rivalry of the Next Gen era.
It‘s not necessarily the rivalry at the top we were expecting, either. Larson was the betting favorite for the championship heading into the season, perhaps unsurprisingly, while either Logano or Blaney had won each of the previous three titles. Hamlin had equal or better odds to win the title than Byron as well. Any combination thereof would have seemed as likely or more likely to rise above the rest and start the 2025 season as a two-man show.
But it was Bell and Byron, and there‘s a certain logic to it — plus plenty of shared history, too.
The pair got very different starts in racing: Bell on dirt tracks with sprint cars, Byron on computer sims. But by the time they reached NASCAR‘s national ranks, their careers became deeply intertwined. They both entered the 2015 Truck Series as highly touted prospects, and both moved up to Xfinity in 2017. They each won titles that year — Byron in Xfinity, Bell in the Trucks — and by 2021, both were race winners at the Cup level. They‘d share the Championship 4 stage together in 2023 as well. Each has spent the past three years consistently finishing in the top six in points, establishing themselves as two of the cleanest, most talented drivers in the sport. Now, after years of knocking on the door, they appear to be on a collision course for the 2025 title.
Every great rivalry needs a flashpoint, however, when competition boils over into desperation. Think Richard Petty vs. David Pearson in 1976, Donnie Allison vs. Cale Yarborough in 1979, Dale Earnhardt vs. Geoff Bodine in 1987, or Jeff Gordon vs. Clint Bowyer in 2012. For Bell and Byron, it may have been Martinsville in 2024, where Bell, in a desperate bid to make the Championship 4, attempted a last-lap wall ride — only to come up short, as Byron secured the final spot with the help of well-timed blocking from his fellow Chevy drivers. Only one could advance, and after NASCAR reviewed the incidents, it was Byron who moved on to Phoenix while Bell was eliminated from title contention.
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The drivers handled the fallout with the grace we‘ve come to expect from them. There‘s no question, however, that the lingering competitive fire — and the raw feelings — from that moment still burn.
Although there‘s a lot more racing left to do this season, it‘s hard to ignore the possibility that we‘re watching Bell and Byron establish themselves as the class of the field in 2025. In addition to the statistical driver rankings, Bell is currently the 2025 Cup Series championship favorite according to DraftKings, but it‘s actually Byron who leads the points standings despite Bell‘s win streak. In other words, this battle is set to go back and forth all year long. And if last year‘s playoff drama was any indication, their paths will probably cross again when the stakes are highest.