Zane Smith has career-best finish at Nashville

Zane Smith's rough rookie season got a whole lot better on Sunday night.

While the Cup Series rookie came one spot short of a playoff-clinching win in the Ally 400, he earned his best career Cup Series finish in a season that's been incredibly unkind to the 25-year-old driver.

Going into Nashville — the 19th race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season — Smith's best result of the season was 13th in the Daytona 500. With only three top-20 finishes since Smith sits last in points among the 34 full-time Cup Series drivers.

While Smith's runner-up finish on Sunday was more a result of strategy and attrition rather than raw speed, the struggling No. 71 team will take anything they can as the summer rolls on.

Smith barely beat Tyler Reddick to the line for second, but if Logano had run out of gas, it would've instead been Smith in victory lane with the playoff picture blown to smithereens.

Instead, Nashville could prove to be a fresh start for a rookie driver who hasn't yet gotten off the ground in his first full-time season. Two of Smith's top-20 finishes this season have come on road courses, and with a street course in Chicago being the next race on the schedule, stringing together two good finishes in a row is exactly what the No. 71 team needs to do.

A runner-up finish in a crash-filled race likely won't turn Smith into a playoff contender, but it gives the No. 71 team something they desperately need at the halfway mark of the season — any semblance of momentum.