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Ryan McGee, ESPN senior writer
We are approaching the last weeks of 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, 75th anniversary campaign of the stock car series. To celebrate, every week until the end of the season, Ryan McGee presents his five favorite things about the sport.
The five most beautiful cars? Check. Top 5 toughest drivers? We have it. Top five mustaches? There can only be one, so maybe not.
Without further ado, our 75 Favorite Things About NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of stock car racing.
Previous payments: The toughest drivers | The biggest races | Best title fights | The most beautiful cars | The worst cars | The biggest cheaters
Five biggest assumptions
For over a month now, we’ve been presenting our top five NASCAR 75 lists, and unsurprisingly, they’ve all sparked plenty of questions. Especially a lot of “Yeah, but what if…?” questions.
Oh, and yes. There has never been a more confusing question ever asked. What if you hadn’t broken up with someone special in high school? What if they hadn’t dumped you? What if you took your friend to participate in this investment project back then? What if Tom Cruise had said yes to the role of Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. never received the casting call?
It never takes much to spark a heated debate among NASCAR fans, but if you really want to start a mind-bending conversation around a campfire in the Kansas Speedway infield this weekend, drop the one of those topics on the group. So don’t expect to sleep because you’ll be talking about it all night.
So grab a Ouija board, a rearview mirror and a copy of Hugh Everett’s 1956 multi-timeline thesis “Many Worlds” and read ahead as we present our five biggest what-ifs in NASCAR history.
Honorable mention: What if Bill France Sr. hadn’t sneakily taken control in 1947?
In December 1947, nearly 40 bootleggers and businessmen gathered at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, to discuss the consolidation of stock car racing, attempting to bring together the unruly patchwork of racers and d sanctioning bodies under the same operational umbrella. At that time, the sport was total chaos scattered across the United States, with no chance of being simplified.
Enter the man who organized these meetings. Big Bill France, who worked the room as an experienced lobbyist from his hometown of Washington, D.C., and eventually took charge. Seventy-five years later, his family is still behind the wheel of NASCAR.
What if he hadn’t been so sneakily gentle? Would stock car racing still be like today’s short track racing, an alphabet soup that’s entertaining but also endlessly scattered with organization names and brilliant rules that no one else knows? except hardened runners, don’t know how to follow? Chances are yes.
To learn more about that first meeting and how Big Bill took control, read this piece from last winter.
5. What if David Pearson had actually raced for championships?
The Silver Fox ranks second to Richard Petty in career wins (105) and poles (113), and his career winning percentage is 18%. However, Pearson rarely raced full-time, choosing instead to focus on the biggest races with the biggest purses, much like the team he did the most damage with, the Wood Brothers.
As a result, he made only 574 Cup Series starts, almost exactly half as many as Petty. In fact, the only three seasons he ran a full schedule – 1966, 1968 and 1969 – he won all three of his championships. So how gaudy would his stats have been if he had chosen to stick with the entire schedule? I asked him in 2011, when he was elected to the second class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“If that word ‘garish’ means good, then yes, definitely garish.”
4. What if Petty had signed with Hendrick Motorsports?
Speaking of The King, we all remember his 1984 campaign, when he scored his 200th career victory in spectacular fashion over Cale Yarborough on July 4 at Daytona. What people don’t remember is that he spent that season driving for record manager Mike Curb due to financial problems at Petty Enterprises. Curb’s situation was not much better, and this victory ended up being the final victory for His Royal Fastness.
What most people don’t know is that Petty was virtually signed with the team’s newest owner, Rick Hendrick, a Charlotte car dealer who was getting into NASCAR. The deal fell apart at the last minute and Hendrick signed Geoff Bodine, who ended up winning three races in 1984 and seven overall with Hendrick.
What if Petty had been in that Chevrolet instead as Hendrick Motorsports became the team that Petty Enterprises had been? How many victories beyond 200 would he have won?
3. What if Hall of Fame crew chiefs stayed with their Hall of Fame drivers?
Petty’s problems in 1984 were compounded by the fact that he was without the crew chief who had called the shots for 188 of his victories and seven championships, his cousin and fellow NASCAR Hall of Famer, Dale Inman. Inman left Petty immediately after winning their seventh Daytona 500 together in 1981 and won races with Dale Earnhardt and Tim Richmond as well as the 1984 championship with Terry Labonte.
It’s a common story.
Ray Evernham parted ways with Jeff Gordon after winning three titles in four years and 47 races. Gordon won another title in 2001, but never returned to his previous dominance. Kirk Shelmerdine, elected to the Hall last year, won four titles with Earnhardt but abruptly left to pursue a racing career. Even Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson split in 2018 after seven Cups and 83 wins. Johnson never won again and Knaus won once with William Byron before Johnson and Knaus retired from full-time Cup racing in 2020.
2. What if Matt Kenseth hadn’t stepped on the Cup field in 2003?
At the time, with the long-standing Cup Series points system in place, it was common for drivers to celebrate winning championships while races still remained on the schedule, and mathematically we often knew they would win long before that. But in 2003, Kenseth not only locked up the title early, but did so by winning just one race all year, advancing to the season finale after achieving 25 top-10 finishes with just one DNF.
This was the final straw for NASCAR executives, who responded by introducing the Chase format the following season, increasing the points for wins and setting the latter part of the schedule and making it calling the playoffs.
No matter how much the Chase/Playoff format has changed over the years, it has remained polarizing for fans and created a lot of “what ifs?” questions about who would have won the Cups if the old format had remained. (Spoiler alert: Gordon would be much happier with his trophy box.)
1. What if Earnhardt had survived?
In a sport where death can be the price of doing business, the list of what-ifs about who might have done what is long.
3:04
Earnhardt Jr. remembers the day of his father’s fatal accident
Dale Earnhardt Jr. remembers the day his father was in a fatal accident.
Earnhardt has repeatedly admitted that if Richmond, Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison had been able to continue their racing careers, his record would likely have been different. However, since February 18, 2001, when Earnhardt died on the final lap of the Daytona 500, not a day has gone by without those who knew and loved The Intimidator wondering what today’s NASCAR would be like if he was still there. .
Would he have won an eighth championship after his resurgence in 2000 which saw him finish second behind Bobby Labonte? Would Dale Earnhardt Inc. now stand alongside Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing as the sport’s heavyweight? Would his power of persuasion over NASCAR executives have prevented moves like the Chase and stage races, or would he have supported these changes?
On the other hand, would we have implemented the crucial security innovations in the years since? Not a single driver has died since Earnhardt.
I don’t know the answer to any of this. I just know I wish it was still here so we could see it for ourselves.
For more on this topic, come back to this in-depth series in 2021written on the anniversary of Earnhardt’s death.
