With eight races in the books, the zMAX CARS Tour championship battles can be summed up with just one word: insane. 

In the Late Model Stock Car division, seven drivers are within 28 points as the series nears the halfway mark of the 2024 calendar following Brenden Queen’s win last week at Virginia’s Dominion Raceway.

For the second time in the last three races, Queen had a max-points day, winning the pole and leading every lap on his way to a victory. Queen joins defending champion Carson Kvapil as the only two drivers with multiple victories this season.

With that win and all those points scored on Saturday, Queen now sits just three points back of points leader Connor Hall. Rookie Brent Crews rallied late to finish ninth and is now 12 points back of Hall. Fellow rookie driver Treyten Lapcevich scored his best finish of the season on Saturday with a third-place run and is now fourth in points, 22 back. Mini Tyrrell is 24 points back, Kvapil is 27 back, and Ryan Millington is 28 points behind Hall.

To put in perspective how close this all is, at this time last year it was already a two-horse race with Kvapil leading Queen by 15 points. 

What’s even crazier is that three-time CARS Tour champ Bobby McCarty is now eighth in points (McCarty finished 21st at Dominion), 43 markers back, but even McCarty isn’t out of it yet. If you don’t believe us, just look at what Queen did last year. 

With four races left last year, Queen was 41 points behind Kvapil. Then Queen won at New River All-American Speedway, finished fourth at South Boston Speedway, and then scored max points and wins in the final two races at Tri-County Speedway and Caraway Speedway. He lost the championship by just five points. 

So, what’s causing this year’s points battle to be this crazy? Well, there’s a variety of factors. 

Some may want to blame the new Hoosier ST line of tires. The CARS Tour is no longer running the Hoosier F45 tire that it ran for years. Now it’s racing Hoosier’s new ST1, ST2, and ST3 line of tires, which have been noted as being inconsistent from set to set and have thrown some teams for a loop at different times during the season.

We’ve got a pair of great Championship battles shaping up in the @CARSTour as we look to July pic.twitter.com/N2ow18u9Yh

— Blake McCandless (@MrF4Speed) June 18, 2024

In other cases, it’s been crashes, spins, and mechanical failures for some of the top teams, and a missed race for Carson Kvapil. 

Queen has spun twice this season at the season-opener at Southern National Motorsports Park (finished 19th), and at Langley Speedway (finished 14th), and had a horrible night with multiple pit stops at Orange County Speedway (finished 13th).

Hall spun at Ace Speedway and finished 12th. He also had an incident at Tri-County with Kvapil and finished 19th that night. Aside from that, Hall hasn’t finished worse than fourth.

McCarty has led the third-most laps on the season with 135. Only Queen (281) and Crews (226) have led more. But McCarty is the only driver in the top eight with a DNF after getting crashed at Orange County. He finished 24th that night after leading 86 of the 125 laps. Add that to a 20th-place finish at Tri-County and 21st on Saturday at Dominion and you see why McCarty is sitting eighth in points.

But regardless of the reason, the average finishes of the top drivers are striking. Hall currently has a 5.88 average, while Queen has a 7.88. Crews, Lapcevich, and Tyrrell are all in the eight range, while Millington is at a 9.50. 

Kvapil, who missed the race at Hickory Motor Speedway early in the season to make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut has to be wondering “what if” he didn’t miss a race. Kvapil has an average finish of 6.00 to go along with his two victories at Ace Speedway and Southern National. Kvapil also has the second-most top five finishes (five) and is tied for second-most top 10 finishes (six).

While Kvapil has won a championship after running one less race before (in 2022), this year is proving that it’s harder now two years later to pull off that same feat. That said, Kvapil went and finished fourth at Martinsville Speedway in his debut, so we don’t believe anybody is thinking that the decision to skip Hickory was the incorrect one. But his performance does make you wonder what the points would look like if he had raced that night.

And it’s not just the Late Model Stock Car division either. The Pro Late Model standings are just as tight. Spencer Davis leads Kaden Honeycutt by just two points, and Kyle Campbell by eight points. TJ DeCaire is fourth, 19 points back, while Jimmy Renfrew Jr. is 21 points back in fifth and defending champion Caden Kvapil is 22 points back in sixth.

The 2024 CARS Tour season has provided us with plenty of memorable moments, wild finishes, and great races already. But judging by these points battles you’re not going to want to miss a single lap between now and October 18-19 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, because each one could decide a champion.

The CARS Tour is back in action with a LMSC/Pro Late Model doubleheader on Wednesday, July 3 at Sophia, North Carolina’s Caraway Speedway.

CARS Tour Late Model Stock Car Points Standings (As of Dominion Raceway)

CARS Tour Pro Late Model Points Standings (As of Tri-County Speedway)

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