Only Yesterday: NASCAR’s Greatest Drivers & the Tracks They Could Not Beat

Ever notice how some drivers have a track where magic seems to happen? David Pearson at Darlington Raceway, Dale Earnhardt at Talladega Superspeedway, Jimmie Johnson at Dover Motor Speedway; sometimes it seemed like whatever they touched turned into gold trophies. 

OK, this isn’t about that. Because just as the greatest drivers had that one track where they could seemingly do no wrong, a lot of them had that one where, well, they could do no right. And that’s what we’re going to explore.

There are a couple of notable things. The big one is that the Modern Era in NASCAR saw the schedule stabilize quite a bit. While tracks have come and gone, there have been very few tracks that the NASCAR Cup Series only visited a small handful of times in the last five decades or so, though there has been an uptick in that in the last five or six years.

Before the early 1970s, though, there were tracks that only saw Cup Series action a few times, some only once. That meant that there weren’t a lot of opportunities for drivers to win there, and that can’t be held against anyone who didn’t. And of course, even in the shorter modern seasons, tracks have come and gone, and drivers didn’t have an entire career to perfect their craft there.

Also, it wasn’t uncommon in pre-Modern Era NASCAR for drivers to run partial schedules; David Pearson didn’t run a full slate for much of his career, for example, and that means more races at some tracks and fewer at others. 

Finally, there have been a lot of drivers in the Cup Series over the years, with varying levels of success. This isn’t about the journeymen. There isn’t anything wrong with being a journeyman driver, but this is a look at the best of the best: NASCAR’s 10-winningest Cup drivers, and the tracks that got the best of them.

Richard Petty

Worst track: Ontario Motor Speedway

Petty’s winless tracks numbers are skewed slightly by some of those tracks where he had only one or two starts. In total, there are 27 tracks Petty didn’t win on, but the vast majority of those, he had limited starts. 

Petty never raced on a track 10 or more times and didn’t have a win to show for it. The one that stymied him the most was Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, Calif. The 2.5-mile asphalt oval hosted nine Cup races, none of which were won by Petty. It was one of Benny Parsons’ best circuits, and AJ Foyt also had a pair of wins. 

David Pearson

Worst Track: Hub City Speedway

Like Petty, Pearson’s slate of 25 tracks without wins is dominated by venues where he only had a race or two to find victory lane. The one that got the best of him was Hub City Speedway in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His best finish in 11 starts on the half-mile dirt tracks was third, though he had a pair of poles. 

The track, which also raced under the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds banner, was tough on racecars. In one race in 1966, only eight of 22 starters were running at the end. Pearson was not one of them.

Jeff Gordon

Worst track: Kentucky Speedway

Perhaps no other number speaks to Gordon’s sustained success than this: the only track that got the best of him was the 1.5-mile Kentucky, where he’s winless in five starts.

Gordon won at every other track he raced on.

Again, Gordon enjoyed a consistency in schedule that Petty and Pearson didn’t. But that doesn’t diminish the accomplishment, because no other driver in this group can make the same claim.

Bobby Allison

Worst track: Texas World Speedway / Hickory Speedway

The versatility to win just about anywhere is the hallmark of the drivers on this list. Allison is missing wins at just two tracks where has had more than four starts: the two-mile track Texas World Speedway, which hosted just eight events, and the .36-mile Hickory Speedway, which hosted the Cup Series from 1953-1971.

Allison is zero for eight at both tracks.

Darrell Waltrip

Worst track: Watkins Glen International

Waltrip’s Hall of Fame career was winding down in the late 1990s, just as NASCAR’s popularity was exploding and several new tracks came onto the scene. Five of the 10 tracks where Waltrip was winless fall into that category, entering the schedule as Waltrip was in the twilight of his career.

Still, there was a handful of tracks Waltrip never quite got a handle on. He has more than 10 starts at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (11), Sonoma Raceway (12), and Phoenix Raceway (13) with no trophies, but his longest-standing string of races without a win was 14 at Watkins Glen.

Short-track specialist Waltrip wasn’t among the favorites when it came to road courses — he’s a combined 0-for-15 at Sonoma and the Glen. Waltrip snapped his Daytona 500 oh-fer streak before he retired, but never conquered the right-handers in upstate New York

Jimmie Johnson

Worst track: Chicagoland Speedway / Watkins Glen International

Johnson has three tracks where he’s winless in 10 or more starts. Like Gordon, he didn’t take one home from Kentucky in 10 races, but the two tracks that got the best of him for his entire career were Chicagoland and Watkins Glen.

Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus had so much success in the Chase format with six championships, as well as one playoff title, by using tracks that weren’t in the title race more as testing grounds, and with just one race a year in the summer, Kentucky and Chicagoland fit that bill. As for Watkins Glen, Johnson struggled on road courses for most of his career despite his off-road background. His only road-course win came on sheer wild luck and the biggest brain cramp of Marcos Ambrose’s life when Ambrose shut off the car going uphill under caution and couldn’t get going again before the field, led by Johnson, rolled by. 

Cale Yarborough

Worst Track: Ontario

Yarborough had just two tracks where he has more than four starts and no trophy. He had a half-dozen winless starts at the half-mile Asheville-Weaverville Speedway, but the track that got the best of him the most, like Petty before him, was Ontario Speedway, where he had seven starts.

He falls into the same category as Petty with his pre-Modern Era slate of tracks where he had a number of tracks with just a start or two, which makes his 26 winless tracks look like a bigger deal than it is.

Dale Earnhardt

Worst track: Riverside Raceway

The now-defunct Riverside road course was probably not one Earnhardt particularly enjoyed visiting. It’s not that he was terrible there; in 20 races, he had 14 top 10s and 13 top fives — he just never quite got to victory lane.

The other two tracks where Earnhardt had double-digit starts and no wins are Watkins Glen (15) and New Hampshire Motor Speedway (12). The infamous Ontario got him a couple of times too; a common theme, apparently.

Denny Hamlin

Worst Track: Auto Club Speedway

Fans might have mixed feelings about the demise of Auto Club Speedway (formerly California Speedway), but Hamlin probably doesn’t. Not only does he have a goose egg to show in 21 career starts, he also suffered the worst crash of his career there. He might very well have petitioned to drive the bulldozer.

Actually, Hamlin might hate the entire West Coast. He’s the only driver on the list with 20 or more winless starts at a track, and he has two of them. The other one? Sonoma. He might not be too sorry if California did fall into the ocean.

It’s feast or famine for Hamlin, though. He’s the all-time win leader at Pocono Raceway, having beat your favorite driver eight times on the Tricky Triangle, and the two California tracks are the only ones he raced on more than eight times and still has no trophy to show for it.

Kyle Busch

Worst Track: Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL

Busch’s numbers somewhat reflect the struggles he had late in his career. Of his nine winless tracks, seven were on the schedule late in his career and/or very short term. He never started more than eight races somewhere and came away empty-handed.

However, he never quite found a way to beat the infield road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway. In eight races on the ROVAL-is-definitely-not-a-word, Busch’s best finish was third (twice). 

Even the best of the best have a track or two they haven’t been able to master. For some, it’s the twists and turns of the road courses; for others, that one nasty oval they just couldn’t beat. Either way, these tracks tell a driver’s story as much as the ones where they made the field look silly on multiple occasions. Drivers are like onions, they have layers to their stories (and they smell like one after a race). It’s important to know them all.