2025: A Season of Dominance: NASCAR Recapped
NASCAR is a sport defined by its parity when compared to other motorsports. The sport has not had a back-to-back champion in the top series since Jimmie Johnson’s reign of terror from 2006 to 2010. However, 2025 in NASCAR was defined by dominance in all three series: Trucks, Xfinity, and Cup.
Corey Heim’s Historic Season in Trucks
As any stats or history book would tell Corey Heim’s 2025 was the most outstanding season any driver had in the Truck Series ever, which came as a surprise to nobody, as the TRICON driver could’ve won the Truck Series championship in his rookie season. Had it not been for Hocevar’s hapless driving in the 2023 finale.
Heim’s first half of 2025 was characterized by inconsistency, but not the usual inconsistency of going from great to struggling. But instead of going from dominating the whole race and winning it to easily dominating the entire race but doing something stupid near the end that would hand the win to someone else.
Heim in the first fifteen races of the season, led the most laps a total of nine times, but only had five total wins, and four of those were races he dominated. But after his Pocono loss came a turning point.
Heim stopped taking races for granted and got focused, which started the most dominant stretch in truck series history. As he won seven of the last ten races of the Truck Series season to get the Truck Series championship, he should’ve won years ago.
Connor Zilisch’s Incredible and Controversial Xfinity Season
Zilisch, through his incredibly dominant 2025, was the best prospect NASCAR has seen since Ty Gibbs exposed the playoff system more brutally than anyone ever has before. All on accident.
Zilisch actually wasn’t so dominant to start off the 2025 Xfinity Series season. As in the first fifteen races, he only won the race at COTA. And after Mexico City found itself fifth in points. Impressive for a rookie, absolutely, but not dominant.
Then, after the eighteenth race of the year, Zilisch would win the next seven of the next eight races. Once summer began, whether it’s because he drives better in the heat or he figured the car out, he, like Heim, went on the best stretch the Xfinity Series had ever seen by one driver. But that’s where the similarities end tragically.
As Heim went on to finally win the title he’d been owed for a while, Zilisch would see his only chance to win the Xfinity title he deserved slip away. As at the finale in Phoenix, while Zilisch would cross the line first ten separate times throughout the 2025 season, none of those times would matter in the end.
Jesse Love’s Second Title
As in the finale at Phoenix, it’d be Jesse Love who earned his second and final win of 2025. Great for him, it was deserved, and in an ideal world, that’s all that mattered, and everyone would be celebrating his win.
But we have the playoffs, so we’re far from an ideal world. So, because Jesse Love made the final four, he would become the 2025 Xfinity Series champion, despite it being clear who the best driver was this year, and it wasn’t him.
Jesse Love was excellent in 2025. Don’t get me wrong, he even had the second-best average finish of all the full-time drivers. Showing incredible speed and consistency. But he was still 2.9 off Zilisch’s average finish, who was the faster and more consistent driver.
This enraged many fans, as it was the clearest example of the playoffs’ biggest and most obvious problem. Which is how, even if you’re not the best driver by a country mile, the title is not there’s in the name of excitement. But that leaves the fanbase feeling like NASCAR is gaslighting them.
A champion is someone who’s rewarded for surpassing all their opponents in skill, growth, and consistency for a whole season. In many sports, this is usually a matter of debate. Sometimes in racing it is. But for the 2025 Xfinity Series season, there was no debate; it was Zilisch, and seeing someone else lift up that championship trophy left a bad taste in many fans’ mouths.
SVG’s Road Course Mastery
While Cup overall lacked a dominant and clearly better driver, with a handful of drivers like Larson, Hamlin, Briscoe, Elliott, and Bell having their own arguments for who was the best Cup Series driver in 2025.
But for the six races a year, NASCAR doesn’t race on its signature ovals and turns right in 2025, a rookie was head and shoulders above the rest. That was New Zealand’s SVG. He electrified fans in his Cup Series debut at the first-ever Chicago street race when he won by passing Haley in the final laps in 2023.
In 2024, the hype stagnated as he went full-time with Xfinity for Kaulig and continued with a part-time Cup effort. SVG won three Xfinity Series races, yes, which were all road course wins. He showed some promise on the ovals in the second half of the year.
On The Cup Side
On the Cup side, though, he had his moments, like dominating Chicago, before damage took him out of the race. Or being a Buescher away from winning at the Glen. Continuing to excite fans but not building on the incredible potential he showed in his debut.
In 2025, he absolutely built on that potential. After he finished sixth in the first road course race of the year at COTA, he would not lose a single other road course race that season. Going five for six.
But it’s one thing to win, it’s another thing to dominate, it’s another thing to be as dominant as he was in these races. But an example of this was his jaw-dropping performance in Sonoma. SVG led every lap of stage one from pole, and to start stage two, he wasted no time taking the lead back from his teammate Chastain.
For most of stage one, it was a case of second verse same as the first. Until near the end, as many cars were pitting to put on fresh tires to last the rest of the final stage, and sacrificing those stage points in the process.
The Stage Points That Changed Everything
And so would SVG as he pitted on lap 53, two laps before the end of the stage. Going for the race win over the stage win. The man who stayed out was a home-state hero and future 2025 champion, Kyle Larson.
He wanted to get that stage win to help his title bid. Expect Larson to come across the start/finish line to lead lap 54, with SVG on fresh tires already caught up to the Hendrick 5 and in his rearview mirror.
Only a few turns later, SVG passed Larson on the outside, the two making some contact as SVG took the lead and won the stage anyway. Despite constant cautions and wrecks, SVG still dominated and went on to take Red Bull’s first win in NASCAR since 2011.
