2024 Penalties: By The Numbers

The 2024 penalties report has bad news for some of the newest Cup Series drivers, and good news for Denny Hamlin and Hendrick Motorsports.

2024 Penalties: The Numbers

NASCAR levied 988 penalties in 2024; however, more than two-thirds made no difference to the race.

That’s because crew chiefs will sometimes break rules if the penalty for breaking the rule is less than the penalty for continuing. If you’re running in the back, for example, there’s no penalty for pitting, even if pit road is closed. And if you’ve got a lot of damage, worrying about staying under the speed limit is less important that getting the car to the pit.

It doesn’t seem fair to count those penalties against a team.

2024 Penalties: How I Count

There’s a degree of subjectivity as to what was intentional and what wasn’t. The numbers will vary with the counter.

For example, the racing-reference.info website discards all pitting while pit road is closed penalties. FOX Sports has reported total penalties at times.

I keep all penalties that can’t be explained as intentional — in other words, the penalties that are likely to have made a difference to a driver’s race. I discard any penalty that happens on the same stop with an intentional penalty. If you speed on pit road while pit road is closed, the addition penalty makes no difference.

I also discard penalties when the car goes from pit road to the garage. That indicates to me that the car was damaged enough that the penalty was intentional.

The 675 intentional penalties I count in 2024 comprise 68.3% of all penalties levied. The vast majority of intentional penalties — 92.0% — were for pitting before pit road was open. There were also 18 speeding on pit road penalties, 15 improper pit entry or exit, 15 too many crew over the wall and eight crew over the wall too soon penalties.

That leaves us with 313 unintentional penalties for 2024. That is slightly less than the 352 penalties I counted in 2023.

2024 Penalties: When They Happened

Pre-race penalties are the ones levied before the race starts. Most of these force a car to start the race at the back of the field. Some also require a pass-through penalty after the green flag flies. They are mostly for unapproved adjustments, failing inspection and the rare case of drivers missing introductions, driver meetings, or other prescribed obligations.

In-race penalties can happen on the track or (more frequently) on pit road.

Post-race penalties are the ones listed on the sheets that come out on Tuesdays after a race. These are often more serious penalties that result in fines, loss of points, and suspensions.

For the record, NASCAR issues a penalty for losing a wheel on track during the race. Half of the penalty is levied during the race (a two-lap hold.) The second part (crew suspensions) is levied after the race. I count this as a single penalty, even though NASCAR applies it in two parts.

Of the 312 unintentional penalties:

• 60 penalties happened before the race started
• 237 happened during the race
• 15 were assessed after the race.

There were about the same number of pre-race penalties as last year, 21 fewer in-race penalties than 2023 and 21 fewer post-race penalties.

From here on, I’ll only be counting unintentional penalties

2024 Penalties: Total Unintentional Penalties

Including all penalties (pre-race, in-race and post-race), Kaz Grala and Kyle Busch tie for the most penalties in the 2024 season with 13 each. However, Grala committed all 13 infractions in just 24 races while Busch needed 36 races. That gives Grala a penalty percentage of 54.2% and Busch a penalty percentage of 36.1%

John Hunter Nemehek and Zane Smith tied for second with 12 penalties each, or a 33.3% infraction rate.

Justin Haley, Chris Buescher and Daniel Suárez ties for third. Each earned 11 penalties.

The chart below shows number of penalties for all full-time drivers. I included all drivers who ran 24 or more races to include Kyle Larson, who missed one race, and Erik Jones, who was out for two due to an accident.

2024 Unintentional Penalties

	Infractions	Races Run	Infraction Rate
Busch	13	36	36.11
Nemechek	12	36	33.33
Smith	12	36	33.33
Haley	11	36	30.56
Buescher	11	36	30.56
Suarez	11	36	30.56
Gibbs	10	36	27.78
Cindric	10	36	27.78
McDowell	9	36	25.00
LaJoie	9	36	25.00
Berry	9	36	25.00
Hemric	9	36	25.00
Truex Jr	9	36	25.00
Gilliland	9	36	25.00
Jones	8	34	23.53
Dillon	8	36	22.22
Bell	8	36	22.22
Chastain	7	36	19.44
Hocevar	7	36	19.44
Stenhouse Jr	6	36	16.67
Preece	6	36	16.67
Logano	6	36	16.67
Larson	6	35	17.14
Wallace	5	36	13.89
Keselowski	5	36	13.89
Hamlin	5	36	13.89
Briscoe	5	36	13.89
Burton	5	36	13.89
Blaney	5	36	13.89
Reddick	4	36	11.11
Elliott	4	36	11.11
Gragson	4	36	11.11
Byron	3	36	8.33
Bowman	2	36	5.56

By Type

As usual, speeding on pit road was the most-cited penalty, with 110 infractions or about a third of the total unintentional penalties. That comes to an average of about three speeding infractions every race.

The next-most-committed infraction was unapproved adjustments (35 or 11.2%.) That’s followed by equipment violations (26 instances), safety violations (18 instances), and tire violations (14 instances.)

Pre-Race Penalties

Pre-race penalties are almost always due to the team, not the driver. The only two exceptions are when a driver is penalized for missing introductions or a meeting (which didn’t happen in the Cup Series this year) and if the driver wrecks during practice or qualifying.

Chris Buescher led the field in pre-race penalties with four, or 36.4% of his total 11 2024 penalties. Buescher had to go to a backup car once and was sent to the back for unapproved adjustments three times.

Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric Corey LaJoie and Martin Truex Jr., each had three pre-race penalties.

Only 11 backup-cars had to be pulled out of haulers this year.

In-Race Penalties

All 12 of John Hunter Nemechek’s 2024 penalties ( which constituted 3.8% of all unintentional penalties) happened on track. They range from four speeding tickets to a yellow-line violation. Six of the 12 penalties were attributable the the crew and six to the driver

Zane Smith earned the second-highest number of in-race penalties with 11. He was caught speeding on pit-road six times in 2024. The only driver who beat Smith in terms of speeding-on-pit-road penalties is Daniel Hemric with seven. Martin Truex Jr. ties Smith with six speeding penalties. Michael McDowell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Ty Gibbs each got caught speeding five times.

Kyle Busch was third highest in in-race penalties with 10. Four of those 10 were his fault and the other six were due to the crew.

I counted five wheels lost on track this year.

Post-Race Penalties

Post-race penalties often include fines, suspensions and the loss of points.

Austin Dillon’s No. 3 team had the most post-race penalties this year with three. The team’s actions at the end of the second Richmond race got the spotter suspended for a race, cost the team 25 driver and 25 owner points, and kept them out of the playoffs. The other major penalty for this team was at the final Martinsville race of the season, when Dillon and Ross Chastain’s teams purposely did not pass Alex Bowman to help ensure Bowman a place in the playoffs.

Carson Hocevar, Joey Logano, and Bubba Wallace also racked up a behavioral penalty each this year.

2024 Penalties Highlights

A few things stood out to me from this analysis in terms of analysis.

Denny Hamlin

Denny Hamlin had only five penalties this year. That’s so much lower than his average that I had to check three times that I hadn’t made a mistake somewhere.

Furthermore, Hamlin himself was responsible for only one of those five penalties.

• One penalty was due to Toyota taking apart an engine before they should have. That’s not anything Denny or his team did.
• He was sent to the back twice for unapproved adjustments prior to the race start.
• One penalty was equipment related
• Denny sped once this year on pit road.

Hendrick Motorsports

Alex Bowman had the fewest overall penalties of the year with two. while teammate William Byron was second in fewest total penalties with three.

Chase Elliott, also running for Hendrick Motorsports, tied for third-fewest penalties with four. (Noah Gragson also had four.)

Kyle Larson, then most penalty-prone driver in the HMS stable, only had six total penalties. That gives HMS a grant total of fifteen penalties for the entire four-car team.

Find the rest of the year’s numbers on the main page for 2024 stats.