12 biggest surprises of the 2016 Cup Series season

It was a wild and unpredictable 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, with a lot of ups and downs throughout the year before Jimmie Johnson won his record-tying seventh series championship. Here are 12 of the biggest surprises of the year.

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Still just 27 years old, Brian Scott decided that the demands of NASCAR racing were too much, so after one full season at the Sprint Cup level, Scott opted to retire to spend more time with his family.

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A lot was expected of rookies Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, both of whom drive for top-tier teams. But it was Chris Buescher who was the only rookie winner of 2016, scoring a huge upset victory in a rain-shortened race at Pocono Raceway. The win earned Buescher a slot in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Face it, everyone expected Kevin Harvick to win the penultimate race of the season at Phoenix International Raceway and advance to the final round of the Chase. After all, Harvick had won five of the last six races at PIR, including a Chase elimination race in 2014 en route to a championship. This time, he finished fourth and got knocked out of the Chase.

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When Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered a season-ending concussion in the middle of the year, his team owner Rick Hendrick somehow convinced Jeff Gordon to share substitute-driving duties with Alex Bowman in the No. 88 for the second half of the year.

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For the first time since 2002, an automaker other than Chevrolet won the Sprint Cup Manufacturers’ Championship. Toyotas won 16 of 36 races to 12 for Chevy and eight for Ford to claim its first title in its 10^th season of Cup racing.

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When Tony Stewart broke his back in an off-road accident on Jan. 31, no one expected him to make the Chase in his final season. Stewart, who hadn’t won a race since Dover in 2013, confounded expectations with an emotional victory at Sonoma Raceway, where he passed former teammate Denny Hamlin on the last corner of the last lap to win.

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Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski each won four races on the season, including two victories by Truex in the first three races of the Chase. But both suffered catastrophic engine failures at Talladega Superspeedway, and neither driver advanced past the Chase Round of 12.

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Sprint announced in December 2014 that it would not return at title sponsor of NASCAR’s top series once its contract expired at the end of the 2016 NASCAR season. While lots of companies have been identified as potential replacements — most recently Monster Energy — the 2016 season ended without a signed replacement for Sprint.

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On one hand, no one should be surprised that Jimmie Johnson won his record-tying seventh NASCAR Premier Series championship. On the other hand, in the 10 races leading up to the Chase, Johnson’s average finish was 19.5 and he only led at two of those 10 races. And given the fact that Johnson had never made it out of the Round of 12 in the first two years of this Chase format, outside expectations were not that he’d win it all again this year.

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Joe Gibbs Racing dominated the Sprint Cup regular season, winning 11 of 26 races, including the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400. Carl Edwards won the Texas Chase race, giving the team a series-high 12 victories on the year. All four of the team’s drivers won at least two races and all four advanced to the Chase Round of 8, with Edwards and defending champion Kyle Busch making it to the final. But they were not able to bring home a championship.

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A series of crashes over the summer left Dale Earnhardt Jr. with a concussion serious enough that he missed 18 of 36 races on the season. Earnhardt has vowed to return to the cockpit of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet next season and is scheduled to begin testing in December.

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This was a true shocker: Just three days after the Daytona 500, Stewart-Haas Racing announced that it would leave the Chevrolet camp and campaign Fords in 2017 and beyond. Given that Rick Hendrick brokered the deal that brought Gene Haas and Tony Stewart together to start the team in 2009 and that Hendrick Motorsports supplied engines and chassis for SHR since its inception, this move was stunning.

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