What you need to know ahead of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season

Welcome to the 2023 NASCAR season.

The Cup Series season officially begins on Sunday with the Daytona 500 (2:30 p.m. ET, Fox). Thirty-six more race weekends over 37 weeks will follow the 500 as the season concludes with the winner-take-all championship race at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 5.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the 2023 Cup Series season.

Kyle Busch changes teams

Kyle Busch was the biggest name to change teams in the offseason. Busch had spent 15 seasons with Joe Gibbs Racing and won two titles and 56 Cup Series races in his time with the team. But his tenure came to an end after longtime sponsor M&M Mars said it was ending its sponsorship of his car and JGR elected to cut costs.

Busch is now at Richard Childress Racing and is driving the No. 8 instead of the No. 18. RCR hasn’t been nearly as good as Joe Gibbs Racing over the past 15 seasons, but the new car implemented ahead of the 2022 season is designed to bring more parity to NASCAR. Tyler Reddick won three times in the No. 8 car in 2022 while Busch had just one win last season.

Reddick is now at 23XI Racing and is the pilot of the No. 45 car. Reddick replaces Kurt Busch after Busch was forced to step away from racing because of a concussion. Reddick was signed during the 2022 season to join the team in 2024, but Kurt Busch’s retirement from full-time racing necessitated a deal for Reddick to join the team in 2023. It also helped that Kyle Busch was available to join RCR as Reddick’s replacement.

Joe Gibbs’ grandson Ty Gibbs is Kyle Busch’s replacement at JGR. Ty Gibbs won the 2022 Xfinity Series title and the 20-year-old has 11 wins in 51 Xfinity Series starts. But it’s worth noting that Joe Gibbs Racing has the best equipment in NASCAR’s No. 2 series and Gibbs had just one top-10 finish in 15 starts while subbing for Kurt Busch in the Cup Series in 2022. Don’t expect Gibbs to simply continue the success he’s had in the Xfinity Series in his first full-time Cup Series season.

Noah Gragson also moves up from the Xfinity Series and will drive the No. 42 car for the rebranded Richard Petty Motorsports. Gragson replaces Ty Dillon at Legacy Motor Club after Dillon was 29th in the standings in 2022. Dillon finished ahead of just one other driver (Corey LaJoie) who ran every race a season ago and he’s now teammates with that driver. Dillon and LaJoie are Spire Motorsports’ two full-time drivers in 2023.

Ryan Preece also takes over the No. 41 car at Stewart-Haas Racing for Cole Custer. This is Preece's second full-time Cup Series ride and a great opportunity while Custer will race full-time in the Xfinity Series in 2023.

Kevin Harvick’s last season

Kevin Harvick announced in January that the 2023 Cup Series season would be his final in NASCAR. He’s moving to the Fox Sports booth in 2024 to serve as an analyst for the network’s Cup Series races.

If Harvick remains the blunt and outspoken personality that he is when in the booth he will be a needed dose of candor and realism to a Fox booth that gets caught up in hyperbole and serving as an arm of NASCAR PR far too often. But that’s something to worry about in 12 months. Harvick would like to go out as a two-time Cup Series champion and it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to see him in the thick of title contention at the end of 2023.

While Harvick had a down season in 2022 and finished 15th in the standings, he won two races and his first round of the playoffs was a disaster thanks to a bizarre fire in the first race of the postseason. Harvick isn’t one of the betting favorites to win the 2023 title, though we’re fairly confident in saying he’ll win a race or two over the course of the season again.

With 60 wins in 790 starts (so far) and the 2014 Cup Series title, Harvick will be elected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame as soon as he’s eligible.

Jimmie Johnson is back (sort of)

Seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson is now a co-owner of Legacy Motor Club and will race fewer than 10 races in 2023. One of those races is the Daytona 500, and Johnson posted a fast enough qualifying lap on Wednesday to automatically qualify for the race.

Johnson, 47, retired from full-time NASCAR racing after the 2020 season and has been dallying in the IndyCar Series over the past two seasons. IndyCar proved to be a challenge for Johnson and he hasn’t won a Cup Series race since June of 2017.

Attempts to make the car safer

Kurt Busch was concussed at Pocono over the summer after his car backed into the wall and Daytona 500 pole-sitter Alex Bowman also suffered a concussion when his car backed into a wall at Texas.

Drivers said repeatedly over the course of the season that crashes felt more violent with this Cup Series car and their words turned into reality with Bowman and Busch’s head injuries along with an injury to Cody Ware at Texas as well.

NASCAR has made changes to the rear chassis of the cars in an attempt to have the cars absorb more force on rear-impact hits. But it’s worth noting that drivers complained of how hard bumps to the back bumper felt during the exhibition Clash. And that race features the slowest speeds.

Chicago street race in July

NASCAR didn’t make too many changes to the 2023 Cup Series schedule. The biggest one is the addition of a new street course race in downtown Chicago on July 2 as NASCAR races a street course for the first time. The race is a giant experiment and replaces Road America on the schedule.

The exhibition All-Star Race on May 21 will be at a new venue that's an old face for longtime NASCAR fans. After a temporary and terrible stay at Texas Motor Speedway, the All-Star Race moves to the reborn North Wilkesboro Speedway. The 0.625-mile track got a second life thanks to funds from the American Rescue Plan signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021 and will host a points-paying truck race as well as the All-Star Race this season.

The second race of the 2023 season is also set to be the last on the two-mile Auto Club Speedway layout. ACS turned into the best intermediate track on the Cup Series schedule in recent years thanks to its worn-out pavement and multiple grooves. But it’s set to be bulldozed to make way for a short track and the chance for NASCAR to sell off some of the land around the current track. That short track, however, won’t be on the schedule until 2025 at the earliest.

The biggest race procedure change that fans will notice over the course of the 2023 season is the lack of stage cautions at road courses. NASCAR finally realized how disruptive stage cautions were to the strategic aspect of road course racing and all road course races won’t have pre-planned cautions in 2023 even as the stage format stays intact.