Bryan began writing

Raise your hand if you thought that, two races into the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season, the two race winners would be Michael McDowell and Christopher Bell. If you made that prediction a few weeks ago, a fellow race fan might have assumed that you’d spent too much time around the gasoline fumes on pit road. But sometimes nothing is stranger than the truth. The 2021 Cup Series season has begun with two very unexpected winners. McDowell was a highly unlikely winner of the Great American Race.

Denny Hamlin set out to do something nobody else has done before: win three consecutive Daytona 500s. Despite leading six times for a race-high 98 laps, the three-peat was denied with a fifth-place finish. But the story of Hamlin’s 2021 season goes far beyond the Great American Race. He will get to experience the highs and lows of team ownership for the first time. He and his peers in the NASCAR Cup Series will get to tackle some new tracks as the season progresses.

Lost in the conclusion of the 2020 NASCAR season was the rather abrupt departure of Clint Bowyer from the driver’s seat. Bowyer, who was wrapping up his 15th full-time season as a Cup Series racer, faced an uncertain future with Stewart-Haas Racing. Despite some speculation that SHR’s driver lineup would not change for 2021, Bowyer announced late last year that he had accepted a broadcasting job with FOX Sports, signaling the end of his career as a Cup Series regular.