Rajah Caruth’s first win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on Friday night (March 1) went to the new 2024 Spire Motorsports team. His performance at Sunday’s (March 3) NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was the icing on the cake.
Corey LaJoie and Carson Hocevar raced in the top 15 for much of the afternoon and LaJoie moved into the top five cars in the first stage.
But of course, the order of the ending doesn’t reflect the speed of the duo.
Hocevar was in 15th place, while LaJoie was in 32nd place on one lap after a past crash. We didn’t even get to see what Zane Smith had in store for us this weekend as he finished in 36th place, thirteen laps after an early touch with the wall broke the tie. rod of car No. 71.
If all that mattered was completing the order, Speyer’s Sunday in Las Vegas wouldn’t even be an incident on the radar. In 297 Cup appearances since the team’s inception in 2019, Spire has recorded 24 top-14 finishes and 24 that surpassed his last performance in Sin City.
However, if we take a closer look at the team’s results, there is one notable trend: the predominance of superroads.
Of Spire’s top 24 results: 14, 17 of them came between Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and the new Atlanta Motor Speedway setup. Only seven of the team’s top 14 finishes took place at the rest of the program’s tracks and the superspeedways also account for 10 of the team’s 11 most sensible finishes.
It’s clear that Spire and LaJoie in particular have learned superspeedway racing, but running well on those tracks doesn’t have compatibility with the remaining 30 races on the calendar.
Of the seven finishers in the top 14 who did not race at superspeedways, 4 did so at racetracks. That means that in all of Spire’s history, he has only recorded 3 top-14 finishes on unrestricted ovals: LaJoie at Texas Motor Speedway in 2022 (14th), LaJoie at Auto Club Speedway in 2023 (14th) and LaJoie at Dover Motor Speedway in 2023 (14th).
Finishing 15th on Sunday as a rookie, Hocevar is just one place away from matching Spire’s most productive score on tracks that account for about 70% of the Cup Series schedule. And if LaJoie hadn’t crashed late, he would have been up there. also.
Spire’s Las Vegas functionality holds up even if you look at complex data, as LaJoie and Hocevar spent 71. 2% and 64. 4% of their rounds in the top 15, respectively, on Sunday.
These values are a far cry from the speed and apparatus that Spire had at the start of its cutting operations. From 2019 to 2022, there was only one race on a non-superspeedway circuit where a Spire car spent more than 45% of the laps in the Top 15: LaJoie in the 2021 Southern 500.
Fast forward to 2023 and LaJoie has competed in five races on non-superspeedways circuits where he has spent at least 45% of the laps in the 15 most sensible. That speed was reflected in last season’s finishing order, as LaJoie posted a career-high high. 20. 8 ERA and 25, a career high. Both marked significant innovations starting in 2022, when LaJoie averaged 24. 3 and finished 31st in points.
The first non-speedway circuit of the 2024 Cup season is already on the books, and Spire placed any of its cars in the top 15 for more than 60 percent of the day, the first time in its history that it has done so. Made on a highway that does not match the speed circuit circuit. LaJoie also matched his average position on a track not consistent with the speedway in 13th place, and had it not been for a puncture under the green and a late mistake in pit lane, Hocevar might have been fighting for a sensible finish of 10. .
Whether it’s Trackhouse Racing’s upgrade through Smith, Hendrick Motorsports’ upgrade through its truck team, or an influx of money from its partnership with Group 1001 (Gainbridge’s parent company), the improvement in Spire Cup functionality is already visible.
Look for the remainder of the 2024 season.
Stephen Stumpf is NASCAR’s chief content officer for Frontstretch and his weekly columns include “Stat Sheet” and “4 Burning Questions. “Stephen also writes commentary, contributes weekly to the “Bringing the Heat” podcast, and is on track to continue. Site Coverage. Originally from Texas, Stephen began following NASCAR at the age of nine after attending his first race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Follow @stephen_stumpf on Twitter.
Carson is my pick for ROY