The 2023 season will be Kevin Harvick’s final season in NASCAR. Everyone is aware of this fact. There still hasn’t been a replacement driver named for the number 4 car in 2024. There are currently rumors and speculation regarding who will get this coveted ride. Regardless of who ends up with the ride, we need to take a serious look at our expectations for the number 4 in 2024.
Silly season began as soon as Kevin Harvick announced that the 2023 season would be his last. The question was no longer whether or not Harvick would retire. Instead, the question became who would replace him. Multiple possibilities have already been taken off the table. One new name has come up recently. That name is Josh Berry.
This brings us to the first of our expectations for the number 4 in 2024. That is, of course, who we expect to be driving the number 4 in 2024.
Driver Expectations:Â
Fans of the number 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang rightfully expect its next driver to be someone with some career momentum behind them. This may not be entirely fair. Harvick fans remember him replacing Dale Earnhardt at RCR. At the time, many NASCAR fans were not sure about Kevin Harvick taking over that legendary ride. RCR even inverted the paint scheme colors and changed the number from 3 to 29. While many fans were won over when he won in just his third race at Atlanta, others continued to be skeptical of the young Harvick’s on (and off) track antics.
Harvick is proof himself that a somewhat unknown driver can take over a legendary ride and still become a legendary driver themselves. Still that was a different situation. RCR didn’t know they’d be replacing Dale Earnhardt a year in advance. SHR knows that Harvick will not be driving the number 4 car in 2024. Fans will expect someone who can go out and compete right away.
Josh Berry for the 4 in 2024:
For that reason, SHR will be expected to do what they can to get Josh Berry. While Josh Berry only raced 2 cup races (back in 2021 for Spire Motorsports), Hendrick Motorsports called on him to drive for an injured Chase Elliot earlier this season. Berry performed very well during his five races in the number 9. He had two top 10’s, one of which was a runner-up finish at Richmond. It is no wonder then that HMS called upon Berry again to drive for an injured Alex Bowman.
While there are other options floating around, Josh Berry definitely seems to be the top candidate. He has proven that he can compete in the Cup series already this season. Martin Truex, Jr. is still technically out there. We know that he can still win races. At the same time, it is clear that Joe Gibbs Racing would like to keep him there.
Other than that you have SHR’s current Xfinity series drivers, Cole Custer and Riley Herbst. Those are possibilities, given that Ford would like to get Hailie Deegan in a top tier Xfinity series ride, and that would open one up at SHR. Truck series driver Zane Smith has been mentioned as well. There are issues with those drivers. For example, Cole Custer’s career seems to have the wrong trajectory to be in the number 4 next season. Whoever gets the ride, we need to look at our performance expectations for the number 4 in 2024.
Performance Expectations:
While it is understandable for fans to expect a certain caliber of driver to get the ride, we need to be reasonable about our expectations when it comes to their performance. Kevin Harvick is easily a top 10 all time NASCAR driver. (Personally, I’d place him in the top 5, along with Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, and Richard Petty.) It is going to be difficult for anyone to fill those shoes.
Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick are the only two drivers in NASCAR history with more wins than DNFs pic.twitter.com/6Gj0e1oHhG
— Trey Ryan (@TreyRyan99) April 29, 2023
In many ways, Harvick is somewhat under-rated. If NASCAR never switched from the old points system, he’d have 4 cup championships. He and Jimmie Johnson are the only two drivers to have more wins than DNFs over the course of their career. He is one of the best at outperforming his equipment. (Think about how RCR fell off performance wise when he left.)
Harvick’s Performance Isn’t Indicative of Stewart-Haas Strength:
Unless drastic gains are made in 2023 by SHR as a whole organization, we need to remind ourselves that Harvick has been outperforming his teammates for most of his tenure at SHR. Only once, in his entire time at Stewart-Haas, has Harvick been outperformed by a teammate in the final points standings. This occurred last season, and it was Chase Briscoe in the number 14 car that finished 9th to Harvick’s 15th. Even still, Harvick won 2 races to Briscoe’s 1 race. It was only in 2021, a season in which Harvick went winless, that an SHR teammate won more races than he did. Aric Almirola achieved this feat with a victory at New Hampshire.
As of this moment in time, Stewart-Haas Racing has two NASCAR Cup Series Championships. One of those belongs to Tony Stewart (2011), and the other belongs to Kevin Harvick (2014). While Harvick has had some great teammates, none of their stats in SHR equipment even compare to his. Tony Stewart has 16 of Stewart-Haas Racing’s 69 wins. Kevin Harvick has 37 of the organization’s wins. All others have a combined total of 16 wins. The others include great drivers like Kurt Busch, Clint Bowyer, and Ryan Newman among others.
It isn’t going to be as easy as putting a great driver in the number 4 car and sitting back and watching the performance continue on. It’s likely that there will be struggles in the first season, but it’s not all bad news. Rodney Childers is a big part of the number 4 team’s success. As of right now, barring a winning lottery ticket, Childers has no plans to retire.
#4EVER An Iconic Duo
A fiery racer and a composed crew chief, @KevinHarvick and @RodneyChilders4 are the perfect pairing and a force to be reckoned with. pic.twitter.com/kBdWau5Jxj
— Stewart-Haas Racing (@StewartHaasRcng) April 27, 2023
Childers/Harvick = One of the All-Time Greatest Driver/Crew Chief Duos:
It has to be said that the combination of Childers and Harvick is one of the greatest all-time crew chief/driver combos. All of Harvick’s 37 wins at Stewart-Haas Racing came with Rodney Childers as crew chief. That’s only 10 less wins that Jeff Gordon and Ray Evernham had together. It is far less than the 81 victories Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson had together, but those two had 17 seasons together. Childers and Harvick will have 10 total seasons at the end of 2023. Greg Zipadelli and Tony Stewart achieved 33 wins during their 10 seasons together. The point is that the Childers/Harvick combination is in the upper echelon of crew chief/driver combinations.
What does this mean for the number 4 team in 2024? It means that barring a promotion within Stewart-Haas Racing or a move to another team, the 4 will have one of the all-time greatest crew chiefs on board. While this is great news, fans still shouldn’t let this lead to excessively high expectations. Whoever gets this ride is already going to have tremendous pressure on them.
It can take a while for driver/crew chief combinations to come together really well. This is especially the case for when the prior combination was a Childers/Harvick level duo. Chad Knaus competed for two more seasons with William Byron. In his final season, as a crew chief, the combo got one victory. Greg Zipadelli had three more full time seasons as Joey Logano’s crew chief and only achieved one victory. Byron and Logano would later become great drivers. The point is that even with top tier crew chiefs continued excellence isn’t necessarily a given.
Conclusions:
The 2024 season will be tough for the number 4 car. This is going to be the case even with a top-tier crew chief like Rodney Childers. Getting a driver with a little more age on them, like Josh Berry or Martin Truex, Jr., would be a positive on its own. I know that goes against the standard in today’s NASCAR. A young driver may be able to develop into a great driver down the road with early guidance from a veteran crew chief, but that type of combination doesn’t produce immediate results, if history tells us anything.
That being said, we need to temper our expectations for the number 4 in 2024. It is already going to be difficult enough for whoever gets the ride. After all, they will be replacing one of NASCAR’s all-time greatest drivers. No one expected Kevin Harvick to win in his third race at RCR. So maybe, the best course of action for fans of the number 4, is to simply have no expectations at all for 2024. Who really knows what will happen anyway? There are exceptions to every rule.
