Cole Custer Sums Up How the Next Gen Car’s Evolution Has Reshaped NASCAR’s On-Track Competition

Cole Custer is a great NASCAR Xfinity Series driver, having won the championship in 2023 and being runner-up in 2018, 2019 and 2024. But it’s strange how a guy who can do so well in an Xfinity car just can’t seem to get a handle on things in the Cup Series.

After his successful two-season return to the Xfinity ranks, Custer is back in the Cup Series this year and once again, he is struggling. He enters this Sunday’s Cup race at Pocono Raceway a dismal 34th in the standings, with just one top-10 finish in the first 16 races, and was asked to compare the Cup cars from his last full season in 2022 to how they differ this year.

“I think the biggest thing I noticed when I first came back (into Cup) is just how good the cars drive, honestly,” Custer said. “That’s kind of a hard thing to say because it’s not like we’re really up there in points, but that first year (of the Next Gen/Gen 7 car in 2022) was so many unknowns.

“You’d show up at the racetrack and really didn’t know what you were gonna have. If you were gonna hit limiters or hit roadblocks. It was the wild west really at figuring this car out.

“Where now everybody has dialed in these cars so good that it’s just a game of literally thousandths of trying to figure out ways to make gains and beat the guy next to you. The field has really gotten a lot tighter. The cars have gotten to drive better, so you really just have to be 100 percent in every single area.”

In his first full Cup season in 2020, Custer made the playoffs but finished 16^th. It’s been downhill since then.

Custer’s Cup record leaves a lot to be desired

In 2021, the 27-year-old missed the playoffs and finished 26^th. In 2022, he again missed the playoffs and finished 25^th. Unfortunately for Custer, unless he wins one of the next 10 races, he will likely miss the playoffs yet again this season. However, he has just one career win in the Cup Series (2020 at Kentucky) and one other top-five showing in a total of 133 Cup starts.

Things are even more difficult now that Custer is the only driver on the Haas Factory Racing Team, after the dissolution of the four-car Stewart-Haas Racing after last season. Whereas he had three teammates to bounce things off of when he was in the Cup Series the first time, now he’s on his own.