This year started off with a shocker as Carl Edwards in January decided to call it quits. This moved Daniel Suarez up to the top series at least one year early in the #19 car.
Then we got more crazy driver changes for the 2018 season as Erik Jones moved over to the Matt Kenseth #20 ride.
Paul Menard got a new ride in 2018 as he will be in the #21 ride at Wood Brothers as Ryan Blaney got a shot in 2018 to drive for Penske in the new #12 ride.
Aric Almirola was announced as the new 2018 driver of the #10 ride while Darrell Wallace Jr. picked up a 2018 ride in the 43 car.
Kasey Kahne picked up a new 2018 ride for one season as he moved over to the #95 car which put Michael McDowell on the unemployment line. The #5 car at Hendrick got a rename to the #24 car as William Byron takes over the ride and the Chase Elliott ride get a new #9 designation.
Kurt Busch in the #41 car wound up on the wait list this season as he was waiting to find if Monster Energy would come back as a sponsor. The #27 car is also up in the air as they need both a driver and a sponsor. The #77 car wound up closing at the end of the season due to no sponsor. Also the whole Front Row Motorsports lineup has not been announced yet.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. wound up announcing that he was retiring at the end of the season while sponsorship problems caused Danica Patrick to wind up calling it an end to a full time driving career. Matt Kenseth also wound up calling his full time career over as well.
This was the first year for stage racing in NASCAR along with a new points format. The Toyota drivers of Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch got the most of the stage wins as being the only drivers to score over 10 stage wins this season.
At the Daytona 500 it was the final race ever for Michael Waltrip who got a top 10 while Kurt Busch wound up getting the year off right with the big win.
Martin Truex Jr. wound up with his best year ever winning eight times in 2017 with 26 top tens.
Ricky Stenshouse Jr. finally got to win column as he won twice this season at restrictor plate tracks.
Ryan Blaney got back to the in column for Wood Brothers racing at Pocono putting them into their first chase ever.
Aric Almirola wound up on the injured list this season as he got into a very bad wreck at Kansas. This caused Darrell Wallace Jr. to get a shot at the big time in the #43 car. He was only in four events and had two top 15 place finishes.
The Charlotte track got some major changes made to it so that in 2018 in the chase for the first time ever the road course will be used.
Daniel Suarez wound up losing Subway as a sponsor as he was found out to be serving people Dunkin Donuts to people.
Brad Keselowski at parts in the season complained that the Toyota cars had too much of an advantage.
Denny Hamlin though came out and said drivers should get paid more money.
The Xfinity 2017 year in review…
The year started off right for Ryan Reed that won at Daytona. He would finish the year off with seven top tens.
William Byron won the big prize at the end of season by picking up the championship. He racked up 4 wins and 22 top tens at the end of the season.
Richard Childress Racing announced they we were dropping back to 3 teams for 2018. This caused Brendan Gaugahn to wind up as a possible part time driver for the 2018 season.
Darrell Wallace Jr. lost his ride at Roush Fenway racing as sponsorship woes killed off the team.
It was restrictor plate racing at Indy this year with William Byron picking up the race win. The test was so good that Michigan and Pocono tracks in 2018 will get to try this out as well.
Kyle Busch picked off another five wins on his way to getting closer to the magical 100 win mark where he stated this year he would retire if he hit that number.
Drivers that wound up getting first wins in the Xfinity series were Cole Custer who picked off a win at Miami. Jeremy Clements who has been a diver in the Xfinity series for over 10 year finally picked up a a win at Elkhart Lake. Part time driver Ryan Preece got the win at Iowa.
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