For this month, The Century Poll has been renamed “The ByrnesStrong Poll” in honor of longtime FOX Sports broadcaster Steve Byrnes, who died Tuesday after a fierce battle with cancer.
Each month during the racing season, The Century Poll will pose a question to members of the NASCAR community and tabulate the results in an effort to gain insight into what racing insiders think on a compelling racing topic, issue or question.
The voting panel for The Century Poll is made up of 100 voters – 50 from the NASCAR media and 50 from the NASCAR garage, comprised of team owners, drivers, crew chiefs, crew members, sponsor/public relations/manufacturing representatives and track officials.
The April question was: In a month, the NASCAR Hall of Fame will announce its next class. Among the 20 candidates, if you had only one vote, who would you choose?
Current NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick and 1992 Cup champion Alan Kulwicki are tied for first place with 15 votes out of 100 each. Both received a higher percentage of support among the 50 voters in the “Garage.” Among those who voted for Hendrick, the most popular reasons were his current total of 11 Cup championships and being an innovator/pioneer on the multi-car team. Kulwicki was praised primarily for “doing more with less” and for being the last owner/driver to win a Cup championship.
Two driver/broadcasters – Benny Parsons and Buddy Baker – came in third and fourth in the poll, garnering 13 and 10 votes, respectively. Parsons led all candidates with nine of 50 “Media” votes. Nineteen of the 20 candidates received votes in total.
