Stat Sheet: The 22 NASCAR Winners Outside the United States

History will be made June 15, as the Viva Mexico 250 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City marks the first ever NASCAR Cup Series race held south of the border.

It’s not the first time NASCAR’s top three series have raced in Mexico (the NASCAR Xfinity Series raced there from 2005 to 2008), and it’s not the first time Cup has raced outside the United States, either. But you’d be forgiven for not knowing the latter, as Cup’s most recent points-paying race was held in the 1950s.

Between Cup, Xfinity and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, a total of 23 races (19 points paying, four exhibition) won by 22 drivers have taken place in foreign countries.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and NASCAR’s first race outside the United States was only a few miles away from American soil. It was a 1952 race at Stanford Park, a half-mile paved oval in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Buddy Shuman put his name in the history books as the first Cup driver to win outside the United States, and it was the only Cup win of his career.

The next race was in 1958 at Canadian Exposition Stadium, a 1/3-mile dirt oval in Toronto. Hall of Famer Lee Petty — who went on to win the 1958 championship — took the checkered flag. That race was also notable for being the site of Richard Petty’s Cup debut.

Yes, that’s right. The King, NASCAR’s all-time leader in Cup wins and starts, didn’t make his debut at a local short track in North Carolina or the Southeast, but rather a dirt track in Canada’s largest city. Ain’t life funny?

NASCAR spent the next 30 years racing inside the U.S. before going international once again in 1988 at the Calder Park Thunderdome in Melbourne. Neil Bonnett won NASCAR’s first and only exhibition race in the land down under.

Cup’s next world tour came in the mid-’90s, as three exhibition races were held in Japan. The first two were held at Suzuka Circuit following the 1996 and 1997 seasons, while the final Japan race in 1998 was run on the oval at Twin Ring Motegi. Rusty Wallace won the ’96 edition, while Mike Skinner scored the final two.

Neither counted for points and Skinner never won a points-paying Cup race, but he’s in the record books as the only NASCAR driver to win multiple races outside the U.S. — and on multiple tracks, to boot.

At least for now.

Up next was the four aforementioned Xfinity races in Mexico City in the mid-2000s. Martin Truex Jr. won the inaugural race in 2005 en route to that year’s championship. He was also the only Xfinity regular to win, as the final three races were claimed by Cup drivers.

Denny Hamlin took the checkered flag in 2006, and it also marked the first points-paying win of his NASCAR career. Juan Pablo Montoya was victorious the following year, while Kyle Busch won what was then the final race in 2008. He’s the only Mexico winner in the field who will have a chance to double up this weekend.

The Xfinity Series also went north of the border to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal for 2007, and that was the first of six annual races held in Quebec. They were won — from ’07 to 2012 — by Kevin Harvick, Ron Fellows, Carl Edwards, Boris Said, Marcos Ambrose and Justin Allgaier.

The 2008 race won by Fellows marked the first use of wet-weather tires in a NASCAR race, while the 2010 race featured the closest road course finish in NASCAR history, as Said beat Max Papis by .012 seconds in a drag race to the line.

Allgaier is the only Montreal winner competing in Mexico City this weekend, and he is one of seven drivers that has a chance at becoming the first driver to win NASCAR races in three different countries.

The other six won a Truck race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, a 2.459-mile road course about an hour’s drive east of Toronto.

The list of winners at CTMP from 2013 to 2019 is a who’s who, as six of the seven — Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Erik Jones, John Hunter Nemechek, Austin Cindric and Justin Haley — are full-time Cup drivers today; all but Nemechek have gone on to win Cup races. The seventh CTMP winner was Brett Moffitt in 2019, and he won the Truck championship in 2018. To win at CTMP, a driver clearly had to be the cream of the crop.

COVID-19 brought a premature end to Truck racing in Canada, but here we are today, with NASCAR’s first races outside the United States in more than half a decade.

Driver	Mexico Win	Canada Win
Kyle Busch	2008 MXC (Xfinity)
Justin Allgaier		2012 Montreal (Xfinity)
Chase Elliott		2013 CTMP (Trucks)
Ryan Blaney		2014 CTMP (Trucks)
Erik Jones		2015 CTMP (Trucks)
John Hunter Nemechek		2016 CTMP (Trucks)
Austin Cindric		2017 CTMP (Trucks)
Justin Haley		2018 CTMP (Trucks)

Eight of the 22 drivers to win outside the U.S. are competing this weekend (seven in Cup, one in Xfinity), and they’ll be chasing the following records:

• Busch can become the first driver with multiple wins in Mexico and the first with multiple points-paying wins in a foreign country.
• Any of the seven Canada winners can become the first driver with NASCAR wins in Canada, Mexico and the United States with a win this weekend.
• All eight can become the first driver to win multiple points-paying races outside the United States.
• Daniel Suarez, Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell — the three drivers running double duty — can become the first driver with multiple points-paying NASCAR wins outside the United States with a weekend sweep.

The three Mexican drivers in the field (Suarez, Ruben Rovelo and Andres Perez) also have the chance to join Fellows, a Canadian and the 2008 Montreal winner, as the only foreign drivers to win a NASCAR race in their home country.

This weekend will mark the 24th and 25th international races in NASCAR history. Who will enjoy the spoils of victory in Mexico? Will it be one of the aforementioned winners, or will it be a new face in victory lane?