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The 3 Most Pleasant Surprises From The First Half Of The NASCAR Cup Series Season

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Josh Berry Austin Cindric

While some drivers failed to meet expectations in the first half of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, others exceeded them by a country mile.

Three drivers, in particular, accomplished more than most pundits and prognosticators projected.

Here’s a quick look at the happy trio.

1. Austin Cindric, NASCAR Cup Series Driver For Team Penske

Since beginning his run as a full-time driver at Team Penske in spectacular fashion by winning the 2022 Daytona 500, Austin Cindric has been up, down and around.

Although Cindric’s results this year have been all over the map, as is typical for him, he’s carried speed in his No. 2 car on a far more regular basis than in previous seasons.

The highlight, so far, came in April at Talladega Superspeedway, when the Mooresville, North Carolina native scored a playoff-clinching victory. Although that’s his lone top-five finish in 18 starts this season, Cindric has already led 251 laps — only five shy of the total he spent out front in all of 2024.

The 251 is also more than twice the number of laps he led in both 2022 and 2023 — combined.

2. Carson Hocevar, Driver For Spire Motorsports

No NASCAR Cup Series driver, it seems, has garnered more news headlines in 2025 than Carson Hocevar.

The 22-year-old Spire Motorsports driver has clashed on multiple occasions with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (both times knocking Stenhouse out of the way) and even been fined by his own team for making degrading remarks about Mexico City.

Despite all of this, Hocevar has actually flourished in his outcomes and speed. The young Michigan native captured his first career pole at Texas Motor Speedway and already owns more top-fives (two) than he posted in his entire rookie season of 2024. Those top-fives came in the first Atlanta race and at Nashville Superspeedway, with Hocevar finishing an impressive runner-up in both.

Thanks in part to bagging two additional top-10s, Hocevar is 18th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings. That represents a three-position jump from where he finished last season, and it has Hocevar with an outside shot to claim a spot in the playoffs.

3. Josh Berry, Driver For Wood Brothers Racing

Consistency has certainly not been Josh Berry’s strength in Year One with the legendary Wood Brothers, but the former NASCAR Xfinity Series driver for JR Motorsports has managed to stand out, nevertheless.

It took Berry, who went winless last year in his lone season with Stewart-Haas Racing, all of five races to find his way to Victory Lane with the Wood Brothers. Courtesy of that win, which he scored at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Berry punched an early ticket to the playoffs.

Berry is 19th in the standings — second worst among the 12 drivers who’ve triumphed this year — after netting only three top-10 finishes in the season’s first 18 events. Still, just by virtue of prevailing at Vegas and securing a playoff berth, Berry did more in the first half of 2025 than a lot of folks had him doing on their proverbial bingo card.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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