After a surprisingly solid start to the season for Noah Gragson, the No. 10 team has slowly rolled toward the edge of a cliff they’re in danger of falling off.
Big things weren’t expected for Gragson in 2024, especially considering his rookie season was among the worst in NASCAR history, both on and off the track. After signing with a middling Stewart-Haas Racing over the offseason, few pundits thought Gragson would do anything notable on the racetrack.
However, Gragson proved the doubters wrong through the first 12 races of the season, grabbing five top-10 finishes and being as high as 19th in points – a position which would’ve been better if not for a 35-point penalty after Atlanta.
While a solid 14th-place run in the 13th race of the season at Darlington followed three consecutive top-10 finishes for Gragson, the last five races have been nothing short of a disaster for a No. 10 team that has looked like the struggling team everyone predicted they would be.
After a crash took Gragson out of the Coca-Cola 600, the last four races haven’t been much better. Gragson’s best finish over the last four weeks is 16th at Iowa, and while he ran inside the top 10 for portions of Sunday’s race at New Hampshire, he was involved in two incidents – the latter of which took out Bubba Wallace – and relegated to a 27th-place finish.
The lack of pure speed from Gragson has been alarming over the last four races, especially with the rest of Stewart-Haas Racing finishing inside the top 11 at New Hampshire. Gragson’s teammate Josh Berry has two straight top-seven finishes, while Chase Briscoe finished runner-up at New Hampshire.
While true that Gragson would be 22nd in points without the Atlanta penalty as opposed to 25th, he’d still be 88 points outside of the playoff picture – likely must-win range with just eight races remaining in the regular season.
For a driver who will be a free agent after the 2024 season ends, it’s time for Gragson to buckle down and try to perform as he did in the first third of the season, or his phone may be silent after the season finale at Phoenix.
