Cole Custer's path back to the NASCAR Cup Series is now clear

 After three years of middling results driving the No. 41 car for Stewart-Haas Racing, Custer was demoted to the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2023. While watching Ryan Preece drive his old car on Sundays, Custer decided to put together a championship run in 2023, forcing the NASCAR world to remember that he was still an elite talent. 

Nearly halfway through the 2024 Xfinity Series season, Custer leads in the points standings, and while he is yet to visit victory lane, his biggest win of 2024 may have come in an announcement on Thursday. 

Gene Haas has acquired one of the four charters set to be discarded by Stewart-Haas Racing at the end of 2024, and with Cole's father, Joe, set to manage the team's operations, it seems like all but a done deal that the 2020 Cup Series Rookie of the Year will have another shot at building a Cup Series career. 

According to Fox Sports' Bob Pockrass, Custer is the favorite to drive for the one-car "Haas Factory Team" in 2025. 

While many may write off Custer's potential promotion as a case of blatant nepotism, one look at the stat sheet suggests otherwise. 

Custer's results in the Cup Series certainly weren't fantastic, but he hovered around the level of his eventual replacement, Preece, in all three of his Cup Series seasons, even breaking through for a win at Kentucky in 2020 that granted him a playoff berth. 

That win at Kentucky, while rather unorthodox, proves Custer does have a clutch gene when competing against the best of the best. Having to go through the likes of Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick on the final lap isn't an easy task. While his 2021 and 2022 seasons lacked any flashy passes for the win, that was mainly because he rarely got a chance to race for the win in the first place.

In the Xfinity Series, his statistics are comparable — and in some cases, even better — to that of many Cup Series drivers. While his first Xfinity Series championship came in 2023, he made the Championship Four in both 2018 and 2019, with seven victories en route to his second-place points finish in 2019. 

In fact, fifth is Custer's worst points finish in four and a half full-time seasons of Xfinity Series competition, and so far in 2024, he looks to be one of the championship favorites again. 

With his path back to the top division of NASCAR now wide open, Custer can likely race a little more freely knowing he likely has a job — either in Cup or Xfinity — for 2025.