Holding A Pretty Wheel: Redefining the NASCAR Rookie

NASCAR’s top series is a pressure cooker. With room for just 40 drivers in the series, there’s a sense of urgency for drivers to win and win soon, lest they be replaced by the Next Big Thing waiting in the wings.

Sometimes that frenetic push to win right out of the gate is unrealistic. Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series has a learning curve, and winning an even steeper one; there’s a reason less than 10% of drivers who have raced in the series can boast a win.

A driver’s rookie year should be a learning experience. Wins are icing on the cake if they can complete races and figure out how to both avoid adversity and overcome it when they can’t.

Prior to 1999, Davey Allison set the bar for Cup rookies, winning twice in his first year in 1987 and becoming the first rookie with multiple wins since 1949. 

Wins as a rookie were a bonus, not necessarily an expectation. Most Hall of Famers didn’t win in their first seasons in the series.

Expectations changed with the turn of the century, thanks to Tony Stewart and his three-win rookie season in 1999 — a record that has since been matched by Jimmie Johnson in 2002.

Not winning as a rookie is not a harbinger of a winless or even a journeyman career. Richard Petty didn’t win in his Rookie of the Year-worthy first year. Neither did David Pearson or Jeff Gordon, the top three winners in series history. Ditto Darrell Waltrip. Bobby Allison won three races in his first full-time season but was not considered a Rookie of the Year candidate. 

What about drivers who won as rookies? Is it a guarantee of success down the road?

No. It absolutely marks a driver as one to watch, though, because a large group of drivers with great success in their first years in the 2000s have gone on to Hall of Fame-worthy careers

Since Stewart set the bar, the sport has seen an uptick in rookie winners. Ten drivers accomplished the feat in the 2000s, one in the 2010s and two in the 2020s to date.

Here’s a look at the list of rookie wins, post-Stewart:

2000: Dale Earnhardt Jr. (2)
2000: Matt Kenseth (ROTY)
2001: Kevin Harvick (2, ROTY)
2002: Johnson (3, only rookie in history to lead point standings)
2002: Ryan Newman (ROTY)
2003: Greg Biffle
2005: Kyle Busch (2, ROTY)
2006: Denny Hamlin (2, ROTY)
2007: Juan Pablo Montoya (ROTY)
2009: Joey Logano (ROTY)
2016: Chris Buescher 
2020: Cole Custer (ROTY)
2022: Austin Cindric (ROTY)

In addition, Jamie McMurray recorded his first win in 2002, before his official rookie campaign in 2003. Trevor Bayne won in 2010 but was not a ROTY candidate due to a part-time schedule.

This group certainly has drivers who won races and championships. Earnhardt, Kenseth and Johnson are in the NASCAR Hall of Fame (with Harvick, Busch, Hamlin and Logano practically slam dunks for the Hall in the future).

Kenseth, Harvick, Johnson, Busch and Logano have won Cup titles. Johnson is tied for the most titles all-time with seven. Busch and Logano also have multiple titles with two apiece to date.

Biffle and Newman won 19 and 18 Cup races, respectively, though no titles. They’re borderline Hall of Fame candidates down the road.

Buescher has won in each of the last three seasons after spending several years with an underfunded team. Custer and Cindric are really too young and lack enough Cup starts to make an accurate evaluation of where their careers might go.

Montoya and Bayne are the outliers in this group; Montoya would take just one more win in his Cup career, and Bayne has not won again. McMurray has been more of a journeyman, with wins in some big races including the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 but no title and a limited win pool as well.

By the numbers, the most successful driver in the above group is Johnson. A closer look at his 2002 rookie year: 36 starts with three wins, six top fives, 21 top 10s and four poles.

What stands out here is the overall consistency displayed. Sure, there were the wins, but Johnson put up a veteran’s numbers almost across the board. He led the points on the virtue of running in the top 10 almost every week. Did his inexperience cost him a title? Probably, but he’d win plenty of them once he worked out how to race for one.

Johnson had more top 10s as a rookie than any driver in the Cup field in 2023. He was a little hit or miss for top fives, with half coming as race wins, but those overall numbers are title-worthy today. He had the same number of wins as ’02 champion Stewart, and when the top fives came around, so did the titles.

The last couple of rookie classes haven’t set the world on fire. Still, there are some reasons to keep an eye on a couple of drivers. Ty Gibbs had a very solid rookie year, with 10 top 10s in a year where two playoff drivers had fewer. Gibbs made the playoffs this season and is learning to race with the leaders weekly. Wins are coming for him; he has good cars, and once he learns to put together one complete race, others will come more easily. 

Gibbs has learned to tone down some of the aggression he displayed in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He’s racing against veterans with more experience and equal equipment, and that humbling is making him a better racer.

Carson Hocevar has been deceivingly steady as a rookie this year. Another youngster who has learned to settle down behind the wheel, Hocevar has been consistent in lower-tier equipment with a handful of top 10s to show for it. His 18th-place average finish is pretty solid given his equipment. Having veterans Michael McDowell and Justin Haley as teammates in 2025 is only going to help him learn. If Hocevar can improve his average by one full position, from 18.6 to 17.5, he’s in the range of some playoff contenders. That’s not a massive leap, and could be accomplished with a little more tempered aggression at the right time. It might not be enough to make the playoffs without a win, but it would be on par in terms of consistency.

While the 2000s were a hotbed for rookie winners, the rash of them puts undue pressure on today’s young drivers. There are some very quality young drivers out there who haven’t won yet, and a few who have found those first wins but have years ahead of them to prove what they can do. It’s a lot of fun to look at how some of the greats started out … but it’s also important to remember that the King didn’t win as a rookie. 

Amy Henderson

Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.