The Four-Time Winners
Plus a handful of F1 three-time winners.
Okay, I’m playing catchup again here. I had planned to do all the eight F1 drivers with either 3 or 4 wins on Friday as according to my usual schedule, but that would’ve been July 4, and it indeed felt weird reviewing a bunch of exclusively European F1 drivers on Independence Day. I certainly wasn’t feeling any real rush of patriotism the day after the Bullshit Babytalk Bill was passed. Instead, I waited, and threw in those eight drivers with all the four-time Cup Series winners I haven’t covered yet. I can now add Carlos Sainz, Jr., Thierry Boutsen, Johnny Herbert, and (much to my surprise) Ken Schrader to my lock list. I ended up moving Nelson Stacy up to my Bubble (Yes) category and Hershel McGriff down to my Bubble (No) category. Despite the fact that nobody talks about Stacy at all and McGriff has the reputation of a legend, I think Stacy was better. I guess I was harsh in general to the West Coast stars on this one, but I just can’t see why people consider McGriff a legend when Fonty Flock did significantly better in the same car before him while Ray Elder utterly destroyed him in Winston West.
After reactivating my Bluesky a couple weeks ago, I just deactivated it again. I was wasting too much time talking there, especially since a number of people I had talked to before on Twitter don’t really engage me there anymore and I’m usually ignored or the butt of jokes over there. As lonely as I’ve been lately, that’s no real substitute and I don’t really belong there as I’m neither liberal enough for that place or conservative enough for Twtiter. When there’s only one person who has been genuinely engaging with me over there and he’s subscribed to me here anyway, I don’t really see the point. Better for me to create on my own platforms than scream into the void. If I can catch up on some of my other work, I might want to pivot to YouTube to some extent though because I definitely have a following there with 6,000 subscribers and I haven’t done much with it yet in years. After watching some dude get a ton of views for his own (substantially worse) statistical model to rank F1 drivers, I wonder how much traction I could get. Probably not much, ‘cause I’m much worse with graphics, I write too much, and all my fans expect competitive typing content. I’m so sick of typing at this point. One thing “Mr V” and I agree on is that Stefano Modena is good.
Carlos Sainz, Jr.
2014: C
2015: C-
2016: C+
2017: E-
2018: C-
2019: E-
2020: E-
2021: E
2022: E
2023: E-
2024: E-
Cumulative points: 52
I originally did not have him as a lock, but I now realize how much I’ve been consistently underrating him for years. Part of that is because his rating of .132 in my model is not great, but he is admittedly just behind Niki Lauda and just ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya, although all of them were behind Eddie Irvine, who I have rated significantly lower. Sainz was dragged down by an extremely long and mediocre minor league career, but his F1 seasons through 2024 were impressive. Although he was no match for Max Verstappen when they were both teammates, he was the only teammate to outperform Lando Norris in his first two seasons (until Oscar Piastri this year, and I’ll have to do more research before I decide that Piastri has actually outperformed Norris, but I haven’t calculated any of my 2025 data yet). However, now that Alex Albon is significantly outperforming Sainz much to my surprise (although to be fair, Albon did actually enter this season ahead of Sainz in my model), it seems like his era might be over but he’s still already done enough to become a lock.
Heinz-Harald Frentzen
1989: C-
1994: C
1995: C+
1996: E-
1997: C
1998: C+
1999: E
2000: E
2001: C
2002: C
2003: C+
2004: C-
2005: C
2006: C
2009: C
Cumulative points: 50
I assumed Frentzen would be a lock despite only winning three races when you consider that in immediate succession from 1996-1999, Damon Hill narrowly beat Jacques Villeneuve, Villeneuve crushed Frentzen, and Frentzen crushed Hill. This naturally leaves me rather uncertain how I’m going to rate these three drivers against each other, but if it’s debatable whether a driver is better or worse than World Champion teammates (even if they were two of the weaker World Champions), he’s obviously a lock. Frentzen is actually the highest-rated of the trio in my model, but I might be inclined to rate Villeneuve highest because not only did he also have the IndyCar title but he came close to matching Hill as a rookie while I think by 1999, Hill had stopped giving a shit and that’s why Frentzen utterly dominated him. That’s why I left him out of my top five even though he led both my model and F1metrics’ model globally (in that very bizarre year, I put no F1 drivers in my top five). Frentzen kept it up in 2000 when he beat Jarno Trulli by the astonishing margin of 22.48 in speed percentile that year, but then he fell off. He never quite proved the rival to Michael Schumacher that people thought he’d be when they tied for 2nd in German Formula 3 in 1989 one point behind Karl Wendlinger, but he was still great. After his F1 career ended, he had a decent touring car career with two top ten points finishes in DTM and a top five points finish in Speedcar, but he didn’t win a race in either series.
George Russell
2017: C-
2018: C+
2019: C+
2020: C+
2021: C+
2022: E
2023: C+
2024: 5
Cumulative points: 46
Although I often don’t give the F2 champion a C+ grade/top 100 season, I felt I should here because Russell beat Lando Norris for that title when Norris was heavily favored. As usual when a driver wins titles at each rung of the ladder before advancing to the top tier, I rated his 2017 as well. I wasn’t really sure what to do with his Williams seasons because although he ranked #1 globally in my model in 2019 after demolishing Robert Kubica, Kubica was returning to F1 after a near decade long absence and a gruesome injury and clearly wasn’t as good as he had been in his earlier F1 stint. Then his next teammate was Nicholas Latifi. It’s possible he was actually elite in some of those seasons and I’m underrating them. I definitely think he was elite in 2022 and 2024, but Lewis Hamilton crushed him too much in 2023 for me to give that an E score. It’s possible I might raise Russell’s 2024 ranking since I ranked Ritomo Miyata third after he swept the Super GT and Super Formula titles that year, and considering how much Miyata has been struggling in F2, that has not aged well.
Peter Collins
1953: C-
1954: C-
1955: C+
1956: 4
1957: C+
1958: E-
Cumulative points: 43
Although Collins died young at the age of 26, he was one of Ferrari’s greatest stars of the ‘50s. In addiiton to winning three points F1 races and three non-points races for the Scuderia and another non-points win for BRM, he was also a prolific sports car winner for both Aston Martin and Ferrari, where he won five overall World Sportscar Championship wins (including the 1958 12 Hours of Sebring with future World Champion Phil Hill, the Targa Florio, and the RAC Tourist Trophy) and two Le Mans class wins where he finished second overall. Although he was no match for Juan Manuel Fangio in 1956 when they were teammates and he won the championship, he did win two of his three F1 points races that year in addition to his second Le Mans class win in a year Fangio himself only won three times (although admittedly, Fangio swept him in qualifying). After Collins’s Ferrari teammate Luigi Musso was killed in the 1958 French Grnd Prix, Collins won the next race at the British GP before he died at the German GP less than a month after Musso in Ferrari’s most tragic year.
Thierry Boutsen
1980: C-
1981: C-
1982: C-
1983: C
1984: C+
1985: E-
1986: C+
1987: C+
1988: E-
1989: C+
1990: C
1991: C
1994: C-
1995: C-
1996: C
1998: C+
Cumulative points: 39
Like Sainz, I didn’t have Boutsen as a lock originally either, but I guess I’m not surprised he became one. Once I decided Boutsen’s teammate Riccardo Patrese was a lock, Boutsen became an obvious lock since he did beat Patrese 9-4 at Williams in the 1989 and 1990 seasons when Boutsen earned all three of his F1 wins while Patrese only won once. Boutsen is also substantially higher than Patrese in both my open wheel (.132 to .008) and touring car (.076 to -.302) models. Like Patrese, Boutsen also benefits from a successful sports car career he had on the side. In an era a lot of F1 drivers raced F1 exclusively, Boutsen earned two World Sports Car Championship wins, a DRM win (the predecessor to DTM), an overall win in the 1985 24 Hours of Daytona, and a class win at the 1988 24 Hours of Spa. After his F1 career ended, he added a Le Mans class win in 1996 and a championship in the GT1 class of the United States Road Racing Championship (the forerunner to Grand-Am) in 1998. That year, he also earned a class win in the inaugural Petit Le Mans.
Johnny Herbert
1987: C
1988: C-
1991: C+
1992: C
1993: C+
1994: C+
1995: C
1996: C
1997: C+
1999: C-
2000: C-
2002: C
2003: C+
2004: C
2008: C+
2009: C+
Cumulative points: 36
A very similar driver to Boutsen, I think Herbert was probably more naturally talented as he beat future World Champion Damon Hill for the British F3 title as a rookie in 1987 then factored for the Formula 3000 title the next year until a gruesome crash at Brands Hatch derailed his career and caused him to nearly lose his feet and adjust his driving style. That likely prevented him from becoming a potential F1 title contender, but he was still respectable. I think Boutsen was a little better in F1 based on what we saw, but Herbert probably would’ve been without the injury. Herbert is slightly behind Boutsen in both my open wheel (.132 to .105) and touring car models (.076 to .033). The big knock againsst Herbert’s F1 career is that despite his three wins, he had no TNL and only a single pass for the lead even though he was Michael Schumacher’s teammate in the 1995 season when he won the championship for Benetton. Even in his 1999 season when he got his final win, he was 19.75 points behind Rubens Barrichello in speed percentile. Interestingly, all three of Schumacher’s main teammates from 1995-2004 were also teammates with each other, but Barrichello was clearly the best. Although I think Herbert’s F1 career is not as impressive as Boutsen’s, his sports car career might be more impressive. In addition to his overall Le Mans win early in his career in 1991, he added six American Le Mans Series overall wins from 2002-2004 including a 12 Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans, a European Le Mans Series title in 2004, and a championship in the Speedcar Series in 2008, which was billed as a stock car series akin to IROC where a bunch of road racing veterans competed in identically-prepared cars, but like the similar Porsche Supercup, I counted it towards my touring car model because the series was divided into several distinct teams, which leads me to believe that even though it was a spec series, the cars weren’t exactly equal. Herbert did beat several F1 veterans including Jean Alesi, Gianni Morbidelli, and Stefan Johansson who competed full-time and even Jacques Villeneuve and Frentzen made starts there.
Ken Schrader
1980: C-
1981: C
1982: C+
1983: C+
1985: C-
1986: C-
1987: C+
1988: C+
1989: E-
1990: C+
1991: C+
1993: C
1994: C
1995: C-
1997: C-
Cumulative points: 34
Schrader feels kind of weird to me as a lock because I’m definitely not knocked out by him and I didn’t have him as a lock until I actually went through his career. However, I think what pushes him over the line is his dirt racing success when combined with his decent but not spectacular Cup Series career. There are only like eight drivers who won in all three of the USAC National Series divisions as well as the World of Outlaws and Schrader is one of them (it might be more now, but it was eight the last time I checked). Prior to the start of his Cup career, he won the Silver Crown title in 1982 before he’d even won a race there, followed by the USAC Sprint title in 1983. Overall, he had 21 USAC Midget wins, 6 USAC Silver Crown wins, 4 USAC Sprint wins, and 1 WoO win in addition to his NASCAR success, and that was enough to push him over the line. As for his NASCAR career, I’m really impressed by his 1987 when he earned Junie Donlavey’s only top ten points finish after 1981, one of Donlavey’s two poles, and a Twin 125 qualifying race for a team whose only other win came in a race with a scoring error. There’s a reason Hendrick selected him in the first place. His 1988-1991 were also very good, and his 1989 was pretty great as he pretty much matched Darrell Waltrip in all advanced statistics as well as the points stanings even though Waltrip won 6 races to Schrader’s 1. He fell off hard after that, but remained decent for most of the ‘90s. In 1997, he gave Andy Petree his only top ten points finish as a car owner, but it was not a great season.
Morgan Shepherd
1979: C-
1980: C-
1981: C+
1982: C
1986: C
1987: C-
1988: C-
1989: C
1990: C+
1991: C-
1992: C-
1993: C+
1994: C
1995: C-
Cumulative points: 24
I ended up surprising myself by how highly I ended up rating Shepherd, a driver I never regarded as highly as perhaps I should have. If you’d asked me even a year ago, I would’ve placed him in the tier with drivers like Ward Burton and Bobby Hamilton, but he ended up scoring more cumulative points than both of them combined. To an extent, it’s a career compiler thing because he had a much longer string of competitive seasons than those two who were comparatively flashes in the pan even if I think they might have hit higher peaks. After winning the Late Model Sportsman/proto-Xfinity title in 1980, Shepherd arguably peaked in his rookie season of 1981 when he won at Martinsville and had a career-high 518 laps led despite having Rookie of the Year stolen from him, but his career was derailed when he replaced Mark Martin in the car owned by infamous conman J.D. Stacy. Like Martin, it took Shepherd years to get back into competitive cars, but he redeemed himself by winning for Jack Beebe in 1986 shortly before that team went out of business. Although he generally performed well, he was only able to find a full-time ride for the entire season twice before 1989. His 1988 may be his greatest underdog season as he won a pole driving for Tom Winkle (literally who?) and gave the No. 33 its best run of the season while substituting for the injured Harry Gant. Shepherd finally got stable rides in the ‘90s as he approached 50, and he gave Bud Moore its last top ten points finish in 1990 and the Wood Brothers their last top ten points finishes in ‘93 and ‘94 before Ryan Blaney (even improving on what Dale Jarrett did before him despite being in his 50s). His win at Atlanta in 1993 made him the second-oldest winner in history behind only Gant. He’s kind of like the NASCAR version of Mike Mosley in that he probably never would’ve been any kind of championship contender in a top car and he wasn’t much of a dominator but he pretty consistently outperformed his equipment for a long time regardless.
Didier Pironi
1977: C-
1978: C
1979: C
1980: E-
1981: C
1982: E
Cumulative points: 22
Even though Pironi was the F1 points leader at the time he suffered severe leg injuries in qualifying for the 1982 German Grand Prix that ended his career, it would be hard to argue he was in any way robbed of a championship or was one of F1’s best non-champions. While his 1982 season was undeniably excellent, Pironi didn’t even make F1metrics’ top 100 list and he has a below-average rating in my model too. In his four full-time seasons, Pironi finished behind his teammate in points three out of four times. The sole exception came in 1979 when he won a tiebreaker over his mediocre teammate Jean-Pierre Jarier, who made two fewer starts. His first win in 1982 was particularly uninspiring as well as most of the top teams boycotted the Imola race, which he won after passing his teammate Gilles Villeneuve for the win when Ferrari had ordered both drivers to slow down. After Pironi violated the team order in Villeneuve’s view, Villeneuve vowed to never speak to him again and they were not on speaking terms at the time of Villeneuve’s death two weeks later. Since Villeneuve was consistently faster than Pironi all along, one can argue he was only in the title chase at all because of Villeneuve’s death. I am impressed by his overall Le Mans win in 1978 and especially by 1980, where he had three natural races led in F1 in addition to winning a BMW M1 Procar Championship race and a World Sportscar Championship class win, but I don’t think he should be a lock.
Eddie Irvine
1990: C
1993: C+
1994: C-
1995: C+
1997: C
1999: E-
2000: C-
2001: C
2002: C
Cumulative points: 21
Very similar to Pironi, here we have another driver who likely never would have sniffed championship contention if his superior Ferrari teammate had not been injured. In his case, that teammate was obviously Michael Schumacher. I’m not as impressed by Irvine’s ‘99 as I am Pironi’s ‘82 even though he won four times while Pironi only won twice. For one thing, 1999 was a vastly less competitive F1 season because McLaren and Ferrari were overwhelmingly dominant even though several other drivers ended up winning after the McLaren/Ferrari drivers screwed up. Additionally, in this season despite winning four times Irvine failed to make a pass for the lead unless you count Mika Häkkinen’s throttle not accelerating on a restart at Melbourne or Mika Salo and Schumacher letting him past via team orders. I do not count any of those, so I think it would have been a pretty ridiculous championship albeit still his best season. Besides that, he was mostly a mid-packer. His only TNL came in 1997. Although he admittedly has a pretty solid rating in my model, he was easily the worst of Schumacher’s four peak-era full-time teammates, particularly because unlike Johnny Herbert, Rubens Barrichello, or Felipe Massa, he didn’t really do much outside of F1. Three Japanese F3000 wins (before the series later became Super Formula) and a Le Mans class win are about it. He should probably make the list, but he shouldn’t be a lock.
Nelson Stacy
1956: C
1957: C
1958: C
1959: C+
1960: C
1961: C
1962: C+
Cumulative points: 16
A vastly underrated driver, Stacy won four NASCAR Cup Series races in a mere 45 starts. After winning the 1961 Southern 500, Dudley Farrell’s only win as a car owner, Stacy’s three wins in 1962 came for the Holman-Moody juggernaut and they all came in event races, the World 600, the spring Darlington race, and the fall Martinsville race. Since Holman-Moody in this period typically only entered the races with stronger field, Stacy’s record is definitely stronger than the typical four-time winner. But his record is not merely limited to Cup. Before his Cup career really took off, he won three consecutive titles in 1958-60 and 34 races in what is now ARCA but was then known as MARC. Simultaneously, he competed in the USAC Stock Car Series, which wasn’t as prestigious as NASCAR but in his era, it wasn’t hugely far off. Stacy won five USAC Stock Car races and arguably peaked in 1959 when he won the MARC title and six races while also finishing third in points in the USAC Stock Car Series behind only Fred Lorenzen and Mike Klapak, who won the first three Late Model Sportsman/proto-Xfinity titles. I think his performance was pretty steady and consistent for the entire period of 1956-1962 even if many of his best accomplishments weren’t in NASCAR. I think I want to list him, but it’s definitely hard to argue that he was ever truly elite.
Glen Wood
1954: C-
1955: C-
1957: C
1958: C
1959: C
1960: C+
1961: C-
1964: C-
Cumulative points: 13
Let’s face it: similar to Cotton Owens, he only made the original 50 Greatest Drivers list because of his success as a car owner. That pretty much goes without saying, and he wasn’t a great choice. Having said that, I don’t think he was the worst choice on the list and we’ll get to that. Much like Shepherd who won three of his four Cup races at Atlanta, Wood won all four of his races at Bowman-Gray Stadium. He did really dominate the hell out of the place as he won three 200-lap races there flag-to-flag in 1960, but the thing is none of those races had more than 18 cars or carried much prestige. Even his 1963 win came only against a 21-car field and I decided to not even list him for that year, although I might change my mind. Wood had been a reliably consistent winner for years in various NASCAR divisions as he also had 20 Late Model Sportsman wins, 14 Modified wins, and 5 Convertible wins, but he was not exactly one of the leading stars of any of those divisions. He was definitely okay! But he had no business even sniffing the 50 Greatest Drivers list unless you give him extra weight for giving his team its first wins…
Pete Hamilton
1966: C-
1967: C
1969: C+
1970: C+
1971: C
1974: C-
Cumulative points: 12
Widely viewed back in the day as one of the worst Daytona 500 winners, I don’t think anyone would say that anymore after years of Derrike Copes and Michael Waltrips and Trevor Baynes and Austin Dillons and Michael McDowells. It’s forgotten that Hamilton actually had a pretty spectacular ascent in NASCAR. After winning the Late Model Sportsman title in ‘67 and Cup Series ROTY in ‘68, he had arguably the best year of his career when he won 12 times in the short-lived NASCAR Grand Touring/Grand American Division. Then the dominant Superbird allowed him to earn a string of victories all at Daytona and Talladega, including the first Talladega race against a competitive field. You could argue Hamilton’s 1970 should actually be E- since he did beat Richard Petty 6-2 in their shared finishes that year, but it’s hard for me to argue he was even close to a guy who won a series-high 18 races despite suffering one of the worst injuries of his career. I think Hamilton was more of a Sterling Marlin than a Waltrip or Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., but we never saw what he could really do because he retired from NASCAR in 1973 after a neck injury in a Grand American race. He did pivot to the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing in 1974 and 1975 where he won back-to-back titles, so I decided to give him a point for that.
Bob Flock
1948: C+
1949: E-
1951: C+
Cumulative points: 11
If Fonty Flock is completely forgotten relative to his brother Tim, eldest brother Bob is even more forgotten even though for a while he was comparable. Bob was the first Flock brother to win in the Cup Series, finishing 3rd in the inaugural Cup Series season in 1949 and he was the only other driver besides the champion Red Byron to win twice. He earned two more wins in 1951 and 1952 but I didn’t feel 1952 was worth rating because by then both his brothers had long overtaken him. I decided to make 1949 an E- instead of an E even though he was arguably more dominant than Byron because I honestly feel Byron should make the list and Flock shouldn’t, but all three Flock brothers deserve more respect.
Bobby Hamilton
1995: C-
1996: C+
1997: C
1998: C+
1999: C-
2001: C-
Cumulative points: 11
I wanted to justify listing him, but I don’t think I can. What I really admire about Hamilton’s career is that he brought Petty Enterprises back from the dead, then switched to Morgan-McClure when the team was in a death spiral and somehow finished 10th in points after Sterling Marlin was 25th the previous season. Then he gave Andy Petree his first win as a car owner at Talladega, where he became the first driver ever to pass Tony Stewart for the win. Beyond even that, Hamilton is one of the best duelists in NASCAR history with a 54.05% lead change percentage. On the other hand, it was a short run, it’s hard to argue he was an elite driver, John Andretti largely matched him at Petty Enterprises, and I have the sneaking suspicion that Robbie Loomis was more responsible for Petty’s return to prominence than Hamilton was. It’s not inconceivable that I might bump some of his seasons up, but right now he feels like a close miss.
Charlie Glotzbach
1968: C
1969: C-
1970: C+
1971: C+
Cumulative points: 9
He certainly had a run for a while, winning four Cup races and twelve poles from 1968-1971, being instrumental in Chevrolet’s revival to NASCAR prominence as the first driver to win for the eventual powerhouse Richard Howard/Junior Johnson team, setting the closed-course world speed record twice in one weekend at Talladega in 1969, and setting the fastest average speed at Bristol ever in the caution-free 1971 event until Kyle Larson broke that long-standing record in winning last year’s Bristol night race. But does anyone even remotely think of Glotzbach as a legend?
Hershel McGriff
1950: C
1954: C+
1971: C-
1972: C+
Cumulative points: 9
It’s hard to pick on a universally beloved still-living 97-year-old, but I’ve got to be real and say that I think McGriff was either the worst or second-worst selection on the original 50 Greatest Drivers list (it’s between him and Ralph Earnhardt, but Earnhardt appears to have a lot more wins). I must admit I don’t really get it. McGriff’s 1954 season when he won all four of his Cup races was impressive, but he was driving for a Frank Christian team that Fonty Flock had been substantially more dominant with, yet Flock has never sniffed any of NASCAR’s greatest drivers list nor has he had anyone ever campaign for him for the Hall of Fame. I realize McGriff was offered the Carl Kiekhaefer ride in ‘55 so his career could’ve looked very different had he taken it, but instead he quit racing for a decade in what otherwise likely would have been his prime. It seems people primarily consider him a legend for what he did in the NASCAR Winston West tour (now rebranded ARCA West). The problem there is that Ray Elder routinely beat him for championships, winning six titles and 36 races from 1969-1975 while McGriff won 21 races and earned only a single top five points finish. That came in 1972, when McGriff did win 12 races to Elder’s 7, but Elder in those days claimed the big prizes, winning two Cup races at Riverside in inferior Winston West equipment, which is something McGriff failed to do. I realize Elder competed full-time in those years and McGriff typically didn’t, but Elder was still significantly better. And he didn’t make the 75 Greatest Drivers list or the Hall of Fame either! The last thing people praise McGriff for is his longevity. I’ll definitely give him credit for that as his first major win came in the Carrera Panamericana in 1950 (which actually really impresses me as it’s more prestigious than any of his NASCAR wins) and his last win came in the West Series in 1989 when he was 61. But how impressive was the competition there by then? When he FINALLY won the Winston West title in 1986, he did so at the age of 58, which is admittedly impressive, but I think the competition by this point was so shallow that just winning 3 races in Winston West shouldn’t be enough for the list. That year, he only barely beat Chad Little for the title, who had more laps led and a better average finish by the way, and he showed little talent elsewhere. I don’t think I can really give McGriff credit for what he could have done in his decade of inactivity nor can I for what he’d have done if he’d been full-time in Winston West more in the ‘70s. If Ray Elder and Fonty Flock were considered not even good enough for the 75 Greatest Drivers List (when they should’ve been), why does McGriff have the reputation he does?
Michael Waltrip
1991: C
1994: C-
1995: C-
2002: C-
2003: C
Cumulative points: 8
Almost the polar opposite of McGriff, here’s a driver who I have frequently seen cited as the “worst driver of all time”. When I was posting on the racing-reference comments sections in the early 2010s, one of the commenters’ shibboleths was that Waltrip was the worst driver ever and if you even tried to argue with this, people would fight you. In retrospect, this was a little silly. Does he belong on the list? No, but he was more decent than people want to admit. The argument for him being the worst driver ever (worse, mind you, than Brent Sherman, Kevin Conway, Billy Standridge, or whoever) was because he was the worst driver with his number of starts and you ostensibly can’t compare drivers with shorter careers to drivers with longer careers. The argument that he was the worst driver with more than 700 starts I might not dispute, but it at least takes a certain level of decency to accrue that much longevity in the first place. What people were really reacting to is the fact that his media exposure vastly outstripped his talent. That’s not the same thing. I admit Waltrip did annoy me at the time in much the same way that Scott Goodyear did, and I get that that’s part of the backlash against Santino Ferrucci now although certainly not most of it. I think people also got pissed that they viewed him as ruining the prestige of the Daytona 500. But hey, while he was often mediocre elsewhere, he was at least a dominant plate driver in his DEI years (which was not guaranteed as Steve Park never did what Waltrip or Dale, Jr. were doing), and that didn’t come out of nowhere. A few years ago, I watched a bunch of the ‘90s plate races I had never see before and he ran in the top ten all day in like half of them, including blowing an engine while leading the 1999 fall event. I never even noticed back then. I think Waltrip also deserves some credit for the fact that prior to DEI he did not have great cars. I don’t think Bahari’ Racing was ever very good, yet he showed moments of dominance in 1991 and not only at Darlington (he had over an entire lead share that year). Almost all the GM cars suffered in ‘92 and then the Pontiacs were drastically underpowered shortly after that because SABCO (the factory Pontiac team) failed to prepare the prototype for the new Pontiac Grand Prix in time (Waltrip was indeed the highest-finishing Pontiac driver in ‘94 and ‘95, which is why I’ve rated him). Waltrip’s Wood Brothers stint was kind of bad but that also came in the era when single-car teams were collapsing. I don’t think he was great or anything and he doesn’t belong on the list, but given additional time and distance to look back on his career, I don’t think he was godawful in the way a lot of people seem to now.
Joe Nemechek
1992: C-
2001: C-
2003: C-
2004: C
2005: C
Cumulative points: 7
Honestly, Nemechek is kind of low-key worse than Waltrip but flies under the radar. Although he had an impressive minor league career winning the USAR Late Model title in ‘88, the ALL PRO title in ‘89, and the Busch title even over Jeff Gordon and Bobby Labonte in ‘92, his Cup career was kind of a bust. Unlike Waltrip, he did have some multi-car team opportunities pretty early in his career with SABCO in 1997-99 where he did basically nothing except earn one of the dumbest nicknames in NASCAR history, “Front Row Joe”. He had a handful of flashy moments periodically, but he struggled to put together full seasons, only even placing in the top 20 in points three times, which Waltrip did 15 times. And he even drove for Hendrick! I decided to rate Nemechek in 2003 over Terry Labonte even though Labonte destroyed him in points both because Nemechek’s win was more impressive than Labonte’s and that was also his winningest season in the Busch Series with three wins, but 2004 and 2005 were basically the only seasons in his career he was relevant throughout. Even though he isn’t rated very highly, I kind of feel he’s still overrated.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
2007: C
2012: C-
2013: C-
2017: C
2018: C-
Cumulative points: 7
The millennial answer to Michael Waltrip, I’d probably rate him higher even though I awarded him one fewer point here. He is a lot higher in my model, he at least had his knockout 2007 USAC season where he erned 2 USAC Silver Crown, 1 Sprint, and 5 Midget wins, and he had back-to-back Nationwide Series titles and his 2012 title was pretty dominant. But ultimately, he was a disappointment and although he could win drafting track races anytime, like Nemechek he struggled to put full seasons together. Obviously 2017 was his peak and I do like his 2013 rookie season somewhat when he earned a full lead share at Kansas by making a three-wide pass for the lead as well as his 2018 where he outperformed Trevor Bayne so much he ran him out of the season. But after that, you hardly notice he’s here at all except on the drafting tracks. Despite his Daytona 500 win in 2023, I didn’t think the rest of the season was good enough to rate and 2024 was even worse. He probably had a higher average level of performance than some other drivers in this tier, but for the most part, he lacked flashy peaks.
Billy Wade
1963: C-
1964: E-
Cumulative points: 6
I wanted to list him for being the first driver to win four Cup Series races in a row at first, but I can’t justify it. First of all, Fred Lorenzen actually won five races in a row earlier that season in 1964 but they just weren’t consecutive on the schedule, and Wade was the first driver to win four consecutive races on the schedule. Second, Wade was driving for Bud Moore where Joe Weatherly had just won back-to-back titles, so that season could be argued to be a mild disappointment in comparison. Finally, he died in a crash at Daytona during the following offseason after suffering a tire failure. There are a few one-year wonders whose one year was so impressive that it might make a driver list-worthy by itself (Bob Carey!) In retrospect, I don’t think Wade is quite on that level.
Eddie Gray
1958: C
1961: C
1962: C-
Cumulative points: 5
Eddie Pagan
1956: C
1957: C
1958: C-
Cumulative points: 5
Lloyd Dane
1956: C-
1957: C-
Cumulative points: 2
When you see how lowly I rated McGriff, naturally, you won’t be surprised that these more obscure West Coast drivers who technically won Cup races against even shallower fields (simply because NASCAR randomly decided to count a bunch of West Coast races for full Cup Series points) will be even lower. Distinguishing between the three, I think Gray was the best because he won three titles and 20 races in the West Series including the first-ever Cup Series race at Riverside. Dane won 12 races and three titles while Pagan won 9 races and no titles. However, Dane went winless in his 1954 title season and Pagan’s 9 race wins all came in Dane’s other two title years of ‘56 and ‘57 when Dane himself only won 8 times so they were certainly evenly matched. I ended up rating Pagan higher because the fields he won against had a lot more Cup winners in them, but I do think collectively, they are the three worst four-time winners in Cup history because the West Coast races simply did not have comparable fields to the East Coast races, which is also why I docked McGriff. I will probably list Ray Elder when I get to him (either as a lock or more likely near lock), but that’s likely it.