Short tracks providing respite from tough season for Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Iowa and New Hampshire may be two of the shorter tracks on the NASCAR schedule, but they've gone a long way in saving Ricky Stenhouse Jr's 2024 season. 

Heading into the Iowa Corn 350 on June 16, Stenhouse sat just 27th in points, with his only top-10 finishes occurring at the drafting tracks of Atlanta and Talladega. 

However, Iowa and New Hampshire have both yielded top-seven finishes for the No. 47 team, a welcome sight for a team that was struggling to be competitive. Stenhouse has now risen to 24th in points after New Hampshire, and looks to continue to move up at Nashville. 

Make no mistake: Stenhouse still needs a win in the next eight races to make the playoffs, and a couple of good runs aren't going to magically turn around his season. However, for a driver whose biggest highlights prior to Iowa was a fight with Kyle Busch at North Wilkesboro, consecutive top-10 days are a major cause for celebration. 

After Stenhouse won the Daytona 500 and had one of the best seasons of his career in 2023, 2024 has been a major disappointment. However, the past two races show the potential the No. 47 team has if everything comes together. 

While it was strategy that helped Stenhouse grab his fifth-place finish at Iowa, he was put in the same situation as everyone else in the field at New Hampshire, having to run the final 82 laps of the USA Today 301 on wet-weather tires. Despite this, Stenhouse found a way through the late race chaos to notch a seventh-place finish that proved his Iowa run wasn't a fluke. 

The next short track on the schedule is Richmond on Aug. 11. Don't be surprised if Stenhouse is back in the top-10 at the Virginia short track, as it could be his last legitimate chance — besides Daytona on Aug. 24 — to win his way into the postseason.