The Best NASCAR Drivers Ever, Ranked
Glenn “Fireball” Roberts was a great driver who unfortunately proved how dangerous stock car racing could be. In 1964, he was racing in NASCAR’S World 600 when he crashed and his car caught fire, leading to his death at 35 years old. His nickname, which he’d had his entire career, went from fun to prophetic that day, and his accident would lead to many safety advancements in the sport, including fire-retardant uniforms. In a career that spanned more than 200 races in NASCAR’s earliest days, Roberts won 33 Cup Series races and finished second in the running for the 1950 season championship.
Only two drivers in NASCAR history have more than 900 starts on their record: Richard Petty and Ricky Rudd. “The Rooster” never won a Cup Series championship — he finished second to Dale Earnhardt in 1991 — but he racked up 23 wins and nearly 400 top-10 finishes. Rudd also ranks in the top 30 for career laps led. Perhaps the most amazing thing about his career is that he’d never driven a race car in competition before the day he debuted at North Carolina Motor Speedway in 1975. He was a natural.
Before retiring in 2016, Carl Edwards was one of NASCAR’s most popular and likable figures, with his signature backflip off the top of his car being arguably the best post-race celebration in history. Edwards was a two-time runner-up for the Cup Series championship, but he had a great knack for finishing near the top of the field every time he drove. In 445 races, he had 220 top-10 finishes and posted the eighth-best average finish place of any driver since 1970, according to Racing Reference. The fact that Edwards ranks in the top 30 for career wins, with 28, but outside the top 50 for career starts is a great measure of his talent at the wheel.
Winning the Daytona 500 is a lifelong dream for any stock car driver, and Dale Jarrett won NASCAR’s version of the Super Bowl three times. Those victories are part of his 32 career wins in the Cup Series, which puts him inside the top 25. Jarrett comes from a big racing family and was able to carve out his own legacy, despite the massive shadow cast by his father, whom we’ll read about later. He won the Cup Series championship for the 1999 season, edging out a field full of icons like Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt.
A 2015 inductee into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Rex White was an early star in the Cup Series, racing there from 1956 to 1964. In 233 starts — a pretty low number by today’s standards — White was a constant presence at the top of the leaderboard, winning 28 times and finishing in the top five nearly half of the time and in the top 10 about 70% of the time. His best single season came in 1960, when he won the Cup Series crown over Mount Rushmore-level drivers like Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson.
NASCAR in the 1960s and ’70s was all but dominated by Richard Petty, but Bobby Isaac put together a Hall-of-Fame career in that era as well. After a second-place finish in 1968’s points race, Isaac won the championship in 1970. He amassed 37 career victories in just 308 career Cup Series starts, which gives him a remarkable win percentage of 12%. Isaac’s impressive list of victories came from his mastery of qualifying, as his 48 poles are the 10th most in history. He died at the age of 45, a day after quitting in the middle of a race because of heat exhaustion.
Terry Labonte cruising to victories in the colorful Kellogg’s Chevrolet was one of the most consistent images of NASCAR for decades. He started in a ridiculous 890 Cup Series races in his long career, giving him the third-most starts in history. Labonte won the season championship in 1984 and 1996 and finished in the top five for points five other years. Two years after retiring in 2014, he was made a NASCAR Hall of Famer in a no-brainer decision.
A veteran of NASCAR’s Cup Series and “minor league” circuit in the Xfinity Series, Brad Keselowski has won championships at both levels. If you see him in the field, you can pretty much bet he’ll finish strong, as Keselowski has finished in the top 10 of more than half of his 388 career Cup Series starts since debuting in 2008. He’s won 32 of those races, giving him an outstanding winning percentage of more than 8%. His championship season came in 2012, when he added five victories to his tally.
After being named Cup Series Rookie of the Year in 2000, it didn’t take long for Matt Kenseth to take the championship. He would do so in 2003 not for his tally of wins — he only won a single race — but because of his remarkably consistent driving that season. Kenseth has remained a strong presence since then, winning 39 career Cup Series races so far and having the 16th highest total for career laps led in NASCAR history. Even more impressive, he’s got the fourth-most finishes on the lead lap in history, with an even better total than his rival Jimmie Johnson.
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