On the track, Noah Gragson has no friends.
Few are as aggressive as Gragson, the newest addition to Front Row Motorsports who just completed his first full NASCAR Cup Series season in Stewart-Haas Racing‘s No. 10 Ford.
Off the track is a different story though. Once the helmets are off, the smoke settled and the rage of driving 200 mph in 120-degree-plus conditions quelled, Gragson and a fraternity of fellow drivers can commiserate and decompress with the accompaniment of a few adult beverages.
“Yeah, you nailed it right there,” Gragson said.
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A new wave of drivers is finding its footing at NASCAR‘s highest levels, a group that includes Gragson, Riley Herbst, Zane Smith, Todd Gilliland and Harrison Burton among others. All are in the midst of their 20s, fighting for successful careers as stock-car racers. The intensity on the track is heightened with every lap logged, each door slammed and each flag waved. But there has to be a compromise once the checkered flag is unfurled.
“They say bring your friends to the racetrack,” Gragson said ahead of the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. “But this is a grueling, grueling schedule and you’re pissed off by everyone else 38 weeks of the year. And you have to be around them 38 weeks a year. … So we can find that balance and race hard. We put each other in bad positions sometimes, and it doesn’t work out. But I feel like we all do a pretty good job at being able to find that balance and separation between, hey, when we’re inside the track, we’re here to compete against each other when we put the helmets on. But when we walk outside the gates, we got each other’s back at the end of the day.”
The collection of competitors — including Gragson, Smith, Herbst, Gilliland, Burton, and 2025 Xfinity Series full-timers Christian Eckes and Sheldon Creed — shared a rental house together in Arizona after the 2024 campaign drew to a close, all in an effort to unwind.
“It’s hard to have friends in this industry,” Smith said. “But fortunately, we do have a friend group that has a similar mindset of, hey, let’s leave everything on the track, and that’s work. Be mad at each other on the track, but put it behind you and move forward come the next week. We’re adults. We can hash it out or whatnot. But it’s definitely fun to have a few beers and hang out after races with a group of friends.”
With his rookie year in the Cup Series complete, Smith added at Phoenix just how important his friend group has become. The 25-year-old piloted the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet in 2024 through an agreement with Trackhouse Racing that was announced as a multiyear contract. Trackhouse, however, announced in late August that Smith would not return to the program in 2025, leaving Smith searching for options in the year ahead. All the while, he’s had plenty of support from those around him.
“Time and time again, it’s the same group that’s behind me, and I won’t ever forget that,” said Smith, the 2022 Truck Series champion. “I hope I get to experience the easy days, because I always remember those ones that hung out with me during those [difficult] times. Super fortunate for those ones, and they know who they are. But we’ll continue to move forward, and we’ll be all right.”
The tight-knit bond between these racers should not be confused for any on-track favors, though. Burton, who became the first of the group to score a NASCAR Cup Series win back in August at Daytona, said he’s seen some sentiment that racers who are friends “don’t race as hard as they used to.”
“No chance,” he said ahead of the NASCAR Awards in Charlotte. “I can promise you, we race each other harder. I can think off the top of my head the amount of times me and Todd Gilliland have ran into each other, me and Noah having our fight or racing really hard.”
Indeed, Burton had no problem exchanging both words and punches with Gragson after a 2020 Xfinity race at Kentucky Speedway after contact put Burton in the wall.
“We’ve all had our moments where we don’t like each other,” said Burton, who returns to Xfinity competition in 2025. “Like me and Noah fought each other and now are friends, right? And we were friends before that and are friends after that. And I think it just shows there’s a fraternity there, and we all came up through the same roots together, race each other and then just get along good. We’re all just friends, right? But then when the helmet turns on, we race each other really, really, really hard, and obviously to the point where we’ll fight each other as well.”
Next season, Gragson and Gilliland will reunite as teammates at Front Row Motorsports. The two previously raced together in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2018, but their connection dates back even further, competing in what’s now known as the ARCA Menards Series East with plenty of fierce battles both there and in late models.
“It’s been really cool to see Todd’s evolution as a driver and his craft as a driver. It’s great to see,” Gragson said. “All of us drivers, we’re all competing against each other, but at the end of the day, we want what’s best for each other. We don’t want to see anybody else fail. We want to beat each other, but we don’t want to see somebody fail. And I think Todd’s done an unbelievable job throughout his career and building his brand and the driver that he’s become. So I think we can work together really well next year. We’re good buddies, which helps. We know each other. We’ve been teammates before. I think it’ll be a very easy transition.”
