Fantasy NASCAR Racing

occasions, but finished second in the points.  In 2009 Blickensderfer move to the Cup Series with Matt Kenseth.  He won in his first race as a Cup crew chief in the 2009 Daytona 500.  The pair also won another race that season.  He started out the 2010 NASCAR season as Kenseth's crew chief for the Daytona 500, but was reassigned to Roush Fenway's research and development team after the race.  He replaced Donnie Wingo as crew chief for the #60 Jack Roush owned, Fastenal Ford driven by Carl Edwards.  They would win two times and have 13 Top 5 finishes with Edwards again finishing second in points.  Blickensderfer again moved up to the Cup Series in 2011 with David Ragan as his driver.  He almost won the Daytona 500 again as a crew chief and went on to win with Ragan at the 2011 Coke Zero 400, collecting his third win as a  Cup Series crew chief.  Blickensderfer moved to Richard Childress Racing in 2012 to be the crew chief for Jeff Burton.  However, after the organization struggled as a whole, he resigned from the position after the TUMS Fast Relief 500, heading to Richard Petty Motorsports to crew chief for Marcos Ambrose.  He would remain at Richard Petty Motorsports through 2017.  He led Ambrose in a full time effort all of 2013 and 2014 and almost won on a couple occasions.  He worked with Sam Hornish for 10 races with a best finish of sixth.  He was the crew chief for Aric Almirola in 2017, but Almirola was injured and missed some races during the season.  Darrell Wallace would fill in four of those events.  Almirola posted three Top 5 finishes.  For 2018 Almirola left Petty Motorsports to go to Stewart-Haas Racing.  RPM hired Bubba Wallace to pilot the #43 car for 2018. They paired rookie Wallace with veteran crew chief Blickensderfer. They duo kicked off the season finishing second at the Daytona 500; but it would be the only Top 5 all season. From there it was pretty much downhill as Wallace was only able to add two more Top 10's during season.  In 2019 Blickensderfer moved to Premium Motorsports to work with driver Michael McDowell.  Like the previous he and his driver posted a Top 5 finish in the Daytona 500 as McDowell finished fifth.  They would also finish fifth at Talladega in the fall.  This was the best team Premium Motorsports fielded in 2019.  McDowell had eight finishes of 17th or better.  The latter part of the season the team seemed to get some traction and show improvement as their poor finishes seemed to be 25th or better.  Everyone on the team is looking forward to 2020 as improvement has been shown over the last couple seasons and it is hoped that will continue.  Drew was back with McDowell in 2020 and unfortunately they could only post a best finish of seventh this season.  It came at Indianapolis.  He had three other Top 10 results; coming at Pocono, Daytona Road Course and Bristol.  They showed they could run well on a wide variety of tracks.  It was the most Top 10 finishes the team had since 2017.  The had 17 finishes inside the Top 20; a big improvement over the previous seasons.  The duo paired up together again in 2021; and shocked the world in the season opening race as they grabbed the win in the Daytona 500.  They came out of the gate hot, posting a worst finish of eighth in the first three races.  But things cooled off and results returned to a more ‘normal’ range.  They were eliminated after the first round of the Chase.  This would be the fourth Cup win for Drew; and his second Daytona 500 victory.  In December 2021, it was announced that Drew would be leaving FRM.  He was hired by Stewart-Haas Racing in January and named the crew chief for Aric Almirola for 2022. The pair kicked off the season looking strong, as they finished sixth in the Daytona 500, and followed that with sixth place finishes at Fontana and Las Vegas.  SHR struggled again in 2022 and it showed in Almirola's results.  The entire rest of the season the duo only posted one more top five finish; this coming at Gateway.  With 16 different winners in the regular season; they were shut out of running for the championship.  They only had two top five and seven top ten finishes.  Aric and Drew were back together again in 2023.  Unfortunately they had much the same results.  They crashed out three of the first five races.  Their first top ten didn’t come until the ninth race of the season, when they finished sixth at Martinsville.  The next top ten wasn’t until race 22 at Richmond when Almirola finished eighth.  In August at Daytona, they had a shot to pull off the win and finished third in the 400.  After Almirola had announced he was going to retire from Cup racing at the end of 2023; the duo seemed to pick up the pace.  They had a worse finish of 14th in the last four events, with Almirola finishing second on the fall trip to Martinsville.  Rumor has it Almirola will drive part time for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity series in 2024.  Not sure where that will leave Blickensderfer.  Rumors are he will remain with the #10 and whoever becomes the new driver.  To date for his career, he has four wins in the Cup Series in 453 starts.  In the Xfinity Series, he has led his drivers in 128 starts; and claimed 12 wins.   Three with Kenseth and nine with Carl Edwards.   Edwards finished second with Drew in the Xfinity points in 2008 and 2010.