Harrison Burton to AM Racing
Are these the consequences of moving up too quickly to weak equipment?
It's been announced that Harrison Burton will drop to drive for AM Racing in 2025.
Burton is coming off a three-year Cup stint with Wood Brothers in which he accomplished one win — on the Daytona super speedway — in what will be 108 starts. His average finish has slipped each year: from 22nd in 2022 to 25th to 26.49 to date this season. The numbers are worse when you remove supers.
Diving into the analytics, things are not so cataclysmic (which isn't to say they're good). His success rates on skill tracks (non-drafting ovals and road courses) in '22 and '23 were 45% and 48% respectively. I will throw out his 21% this season as an aberration on account of him losing his ride. His 47% across 2022-2023 was fourth-worst, ahead of Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, and Corey LaJoie. His Cup career performance has not been good enough to stick around, but he's not been blown out of the water.
In his two-year Xfinity run between 2020 and 2021, Burton had skill track success rates of 79% and 72%. His PFAEs were 3.6 and 0.3. His 2020 season was a notch below elite. But, it's interesting that the further we've gotten from the algorithmically-assigned starting grids (which distort success rate and PFAE), the worse he's done.
AM Racing's #15 has been tremendously weak this season, with an ASP / eARP / AFP triple-slash of 26 / 27 / 27. Part of the weakness has been Hailie Deegan's pilotage: she's slashed a 29/ 27 / 27. In 2023, Brett Moffitt drove AM's #25 to an 18 / 17 / 18. With a competent driver, they are a middling team.
Is that good enough for Burton? I think it's fair. Given how quickly he's moved through his career, it's hard to know who he is. After a year in the truck series, two COVID years in Xfinity, and three weak Cup seasons, he has an opportunity to re-establish himself at a competent, if unspectacular, Xfinity team.
My guess: he will marginally improve on what Moffitt was able to accomplish.