Zane Smith subscribes to the belief that drivers need to prove their worth within their first 100 starts in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Smith will hit that milestone himself in Sunday’s eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. And you’d better believe winning is on his mind.
“I hope to get my first Cup Series win,” Smith said in a Tuesday teleconference. “I don’t know if that counts before 100 starts, but it’d be awesome.”
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Driving the No. 38 Ford for Front Row Motorsports, the 27-year-old Smith understands the odds, but confidence is high among his team, particularly after top-five runs at Charlotte Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway at the end of May.
“It would be awesome to pull that off, and mile-and-a-halves have been good for us since Charlotte,” Smith said. “So it’s exciting, and I think definitely possible.”
Across his prior 99 starts, Smith has raced for RFK Racing, Rick Ware Racing, Spire Motorsports via Trackhouse Racing and Front Row Motorsports, including a full rookie campaign with Spire in 2024 before transitioning to FRM for 2025 and 2026. After collecting a personal-best five top 10s last year, Smith has already set new high marks for himself this year, earning six top 10s in the first 18 races this season and equaling his 2024 best of two top fives after a fourth-place finish at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego.
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Smith has just one runner-up finish to his credit, along with four other top fives. But the flashes he has shown, he believes, indicate he is nearing a breakthrough.
“Everything has to go right for a race win, but showing that you’re running up front and having good runs, I think, is what’s super important,” Smith said. “And fortunately, I’ve had glimpses of that throughout my early starts, but I would say since my, like, 80-ish start, it’s been more consistent of being able to run up front more consistently. And recently, since Charlotte, I’ve been able to lead laps and contend for a race win. And I have a few seconds and thirds, whatever, but just honestly leading these races at the wrong time. Just need to do it a little bit later. But I feel like that’s what’s mostly important.
“I feel like everyone understands in the industry how hard these races are to win — and then on top of that, we’re a smaller team, too, so we’re doing a lot with a little and trying to make big strides each year. So proud of that and just proud of how we’re running, but yeah, would love to put an exclamation mark on this on the 100th start.”
Perhaps Smith’s most significant takeaway through 99 prior Cup starts has been how to overcome adversity. Multiple strong performances have been crushed by late incidents, most recently including Michigan, where he crashed while running ninth at Lap 142, and again a week later at Pocono, where he spun and crashed out from a third-place battle at Lap 41. But a San Diego top five and a Sonoma top 20 have helped steady the stretch, providing momentum as Smith enters the second half of the regular season.
“In just one Cup race, you will experience so much. There are so many ups and downs throughout a Cup race and it‘s like that every weekend,” Smith said. “I can probably count on one hand how many Cup races I‘ve had where it‘s like, ‘Man, that went really smooth and everything went right.’ I just feel like the main thing is you‘ve got to take the little wins and pile them into bigger wins and eventually you‘re gonna be racing for a race win.
“The harder thing is when you‘re part of a smaller team going against a powerhouse team like a Penske, a Hendrick, a Gibbs, they have more people and we‘re trying to become that one day. By doing that, you‘ve got to win races and run up front and prove your worth, and I feel like we‘re accomplishing that. I hope to keep that going, but there are so many ups and downs and I‘m certainly a way different race car driver now versus what I was in my rookie year and certainly what I was in the Truck Series.”
The next step is turning those strong runs into consistent top-10 finishes, a task Smith believes is reasonable as the schedule turns back to ovals for the rest of 2026.
“Our whole group is a really fun group to work with, which says a lot,” Smith said. “We just had a year last year of past communication and past times to know what to do for adjustments going from practice to qualifying, and qualifying to the race more importantly, and I feel like some of that is showing. But just trying to carry the momentum is the main thing.”