Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is riding high (relatively).
The JTG Daugherty Racing driver does not have a win after 14 NASCAR Cup Series races this season, but he’s in the midst of the best stretch of his Cup career.
Entering Sunday’s inaugural Cup Series race at the Worldwide Technology Raceway at Gateway in Madison, Ill., the No. 47 team has stitched together an achievement for Stenhouse.
For the first time in 506 career Cup starts, Stenhouse has earned four consecutive top-10 finishes.
That stretch has seen the 34-year-old Stenhouse finish second at Dover Motor Speedway (his best finish on a paved track 1.5-miles or shorter since he finished second at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016), eighth at Darlington Raceway, eighth at Kansas Speedway and then seventh in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
What makes Stenhouse’s personal record standout even more is what preceded it.
Through the first 10 races, Stenhouse and the No. 47 team had just one top-10 finish, a 10th at Auto Club Speedway. Outside that, Stenhouse had four DNFs. Three were for wrecks (Daytona 500, Atlanta and Talladega) and one for a drivetrain problem at Circuit of The Americas.
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But before Dover, Stenhouse’s best finish outside Auto Club Speedway was 21st at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“I think for me, and really our whole team, that Dover run showed the potential that we have, if we get everything right and don’t make mistakes and everybody does their jobs,” Stenhouse told SPEED SPORT. “That gave us a lot of confidence … we try and get it right every weekend, but it doesn’t always happen. But I think it gave the whole shop definitely a little boost of confidence that what we’re doing and what we’re working on is the right direction and anytime you can get some confirmation like that is a big bonus.”
After an abysmal first 10 races, Stenhouse is now on track for his best season since 2018 with one top five and five top 10s. He had three top fives in 2018.
Has there been any whiplash for the overall expectations of Stenhouse and his team?
“(Crew chief) Brian Pattie and me were like, ‘Man, if we can get the same cars as everybody else, we feel confident in our team’s ability and our ability to go out and compete and get the job done.’ We got the same equipment now,” Stenhouse said.
But having the same car can only go so far.
This season has seen JTG Daugherty Racing retract from a two to one-car operation. That means less data being produced by the team to get practical information from.
“We might not have as many resources or big manufacturer support, but we got some really good people at our shop,” Stenhouse said. “We’re learning as fast as we can with this car and just trying to take something out of (each) weekend that we can take to the next weekend to make our program better. So it’s been an interesting year with how different the cars are and the different tendencies of this race car … We got one car that we’re getting information from every week. It’s hard. So our notebook is building, but it’s building slower than some of the bigger teams that have four notebooks every weekend.”
As a driver, Stenhouse said the biggest learning curve for him when it comes to the Next Gen car is how he uses the brake.
Unlike the last generation of car, he tries to “avoid it all costs.”
“I’ve always used some brake to really get our car to rotate,” Stenhouse said. “But we could always change our break sizes, brake rotors, the calipers. Right now with this race car, you do not want to touch the brake. … It just really slows the car down too much. Because our brake package is so big with this car, compared to what we used to have. With the drag that this package has, when you use the brake, it takes a long time to get that momentum kind of built back up. So that’s something that I feel like I’ve been focused on on the driving side.”
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Which brings us to WWT Raceway.
The 1.25-mile track just outside St. Louis has a tight corner in turns one and two, which will force drivers to brake some before they take on the faster end of the track in turns three and four.
Stenhouse has three Xfinity Series start there, but the last came in 2010.
Given the challenge that comes with braking the Next Gen car, how does Stenhouse expect it to handle at Gateway, which Stenhouse considers a short track not because of the length, but how you drive it.
“The breaking potential is better than we’ve ever had,” Stenhouse said. “You’ll be able to really drive into the corner in Turns 1 and 2 and get the car slowed down in a shorter amount of time than what we used to be able to. Everybody’s gonna have to use brake. Where I feel like the brake is tricky is on a mile-and-a-half race track, when you don’t necessarily have to use the brake. So everybody will be using break this weekend. Obviously, you’ll use less break into turn three, but that being said, you can use the downshifting to help you slow down as well. So it’s just a really interesting time trying to figure out which philosophy behind the wheel is going to be better.”