- OK, who is the greatest NASCAR Cup driver to never win a Cup championship?
- We asked a dozen retired and active NASCAR writers for their opinions.
- We interviewed team owners, industry insiders, radio/TV broadcasters and track operators.
- See if you agree with the Big Three.
Let’s have a debate. Not an argument, but an debate. Civil. Thoughtful. Respectful. Facts, not shady distortions of the truth. On an intellectual level… if that exists these days. Let’s keep it clean.
The subject: Best NASCAR driver – past or present – never to win a Cup Series championship.
Three logical candidates: the late Junior Johnson; Mark Martin, long retired; or current championship Denny Hamlin, playoff contender. But voters are allowed, even encouraged, to nominate anyone outside that trio. Surely there must be others who came close but never won the big trophy.
We asked a dozen retired and active NASCAR writers for their opinions. We interviewed team owners, industry insiders, radio/TV broadcasters and track operators. We even asked one or two random fans. In total, their experience of daily sport reaches almost 500 years. (Our four Automatic week the contributors alone totaled nearly 175 years). No member of the panel ever worked with Hamlin, Martin or Johnson, although most have followed them closely over the past 50 years.
Why not me? Denny Hamlin seems like a perfect answer to the question of the greatest driver in NASCAR history without a Cup championship.
These statistics are useful, but certainly don’t tell the whole story:
Big Three: Mark Martin, Denny Hamlin, Junior Johnson
Hamlin: 40 poles and 50 victories in 641 starts; three Daytona 500s; a Coca-Cola 600; a South 500; two victories at Talladega; a NASCAR All-Star victory; 14 seasons in the top 10; victories on 19 different tracks; Rookie of the year 2006, all accomplished with Joe Gibbs Racing;
Martin: 56 poles and 40 victories in 882 starts on 20 circuits; five seasons as a points runner-up and four seasons as a third-place finisher; 17 seasons in the top 10; Southern 500, Coca-Cola 500 and Talladega 500 victories; won on road courses, superspeedways, short tracks and intermediate tracks; 35 wins with Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing, five with Hendrick Motorsports;
Johnson: 46 poles and 50 victories in 313 starts; four top-10 seasons without ever running the full schedule; only 12 of the 50 victories took place on current tracks; won the second Daytona 500 on a day when it was widely reported that he had “discovered” drafting (others dispute this); best points finish was sixth in 1955 and 1961; he spent part of 1956-1957 in an Ohio prison after being arrested, tried and convicted of moonshining.
Mark Martin has been a Cup championship runner-up no less than five times in his career.
Among the panel’s comments regarding the greatest non-championship driver:
• “Easily, Mark Martin. Five times vice-world champion, four times third. Honorable mention: Carl Edwards. Ironically, both saw their title hopes dashed by NASCAR points penalties to their Jack Rouss-cars owned by owners who had no bearing on the value of the race: Martin, an intake manifold spacer at Richmond in 1990 and Edwards, an oil tank cover at Las Vegas in 2008.”
• “I’m going to have to pick Hamlin because he’s won the Daytona 500 three times and Talladega twice. Martin has never won at Daytona and he has only won once at Talladega.
• “It must be Mark Martin.” Tough as nails and a reliable points runner who was second best all time (behind Matt Kenseth) in this category. Martin was the prototype stock car driver: smart, steady and stubborn because the days were long, convinced he could get the job done under any circumstances. His lack of Cup championships is a crazy black hole in sports history.
• “Just looking at the numbers, it has to be Junior Johnson.” He achieved his 50 victories in 313 starts. It took Hamlin 641 starts to get to 50 wins. Mark Martin has 40 victories in 882 starts.
Curtis Turner had 54 top-5 finishes in 184 career starts from 1949 to 1968.
• Curtis Turner was one of the greatest driving talents of all time and a world-class party animal. He never focused on a championship run. He was too busy building a speedway (Charlotte), making and losing fortunes in other business ventures (lumber), hobnobbing with Hollywood types, and daring to challenge Bill France Sr. .trying to organize a drivers union, etc.
• “A vote for Martin. He was so consistent from race to race, year to year with Roush, but couldn’t pass Earnhardt and Childress. Then (he couldn’t get out of it) Gordon. Like, uh, Hamlin, it seems he tended to not do well in a final confrontation because of his nervousness.
• “Junior Johnson, no contest. Country-smart, talented, courageous and courageous. He allegedly ran circles around the “other” Johnson (Jimmie) with a load of “brilliance sloshing around in the trunk.”
• “After considering the number of races, points system and years of driving, I choose Denny Hamlin. Since his debut in 2005, he has failed to win in a single season (2018). He even won in 2013, when he missed four races (due to injury). He and Junior Johnson are tied for wins, but Hamlin has more top 5s and top 10s, and more laps led.
• “Turner, just because he was a badass in every way.”
• “My gut tells me Hamlin for the performance, Martin for the likability and Junior for his legendary status. Hamlin and Johnson have each won 50 races and Martin 40, but three Daytona 500s (by Hamlin) break the ties. And also, no more cheating in Junior’s time.
• “Mark Martin is the first that comes to mind. Five second places, 13 top 5s and 40 career victories. Only Richard Petty has more finalist points (6) and only Bobby Allison has as many (5). The 26-point loss to Dale Earnhardt in 1990 due to an early-season points penalty is still a point of contention for many Martin supporters. Had it not been for the 46-point loss, due to a carburetor spacer problem, he would have apparently won the title by 20 points. He was 31 when he missed the 1990 title against Earnhardt. Nineteen years later, at age 50, he was still chasing championships, finishing second behind (Hendrick Motorsports) teammate Jimmie Johnson.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his 26 career victories caught the attention of a NASCAR expert on our panel.
• “Dale Earnhardt Jr. is another legitimate candidate. He had at least one good chance to win it before crashing out at Atlanta (late 2004) and racking up an impressive number of career wins (26). He was burdened by loyalty to an average team leader, at best, and by his own lack of stamina, which he exacerbated rather than worked on. The talent was there. »
• “As a journalist, I covered Mark Martin’s entire Cup career and watched him miss the Daytona 500 victory by inches. I was in Atlanta when, in the last race of 1989, he was close to winning the championship. Jack Roush told me the morning of the race that they raised the rev limit to try to win the race. Instead, the engine exploded. I love guys who try hard and fail; it was Martin. He has invested so much in his race. I’ve never met anyone who tried harder. He deserved to have been champion several times.
• “Junior Johnson might be the best driver out of the three you mentioned. Like virtually every driver of his era, he was best on the shortest tracks. But my vote would be for Fireball Roberts. He was the first superstar of superspeedway and he was always very competitive on short tracks. Its owners did not seek championships, but rather went to big-money races.
• “Mark Martin is a no-brainer; always the bridesmaid, never the champion! Hamlin is still in the race, so it’s too early to predict. I think (the late) Tim Richmond would have been in that group if he had competed longer.
Your turn, gentle reader: what do you say?
Contributing editor
Unemployed after three years as an Army officer and Vietnam veteran, Al Pearce shamelessly lied on the sports team of a small Virginia newspaper in 1969. He inherited motorsports, a strange rhythm and unknown which quickly became an obsession.
In 53 years – 48 of which are ongoing with Autoweek – there have been thousands of NASCAR, NHRA, IMSA and APBA assignments at weekend tracks and major venues like Daytona Beach, Indianapolis, LeMans and Watkins Glen. This job – and the benefits that come with it – has taken him to travel to all 50 states and more than a dozen countries.
He had the chance to attract the interest of several publishers, hence his 13 books on motorsport. He can change a tire on his Hyundai, but that’s it.
