Which NASCAR driver has the most wins at Talladega Superspeedway? Check out who tops the list at Dega!
NASCAR has a long and storied history with Talladega Superspeedway dating back to the 1969 season. Since that point, the NASCAR Cup Series has competed in a staggering 109 races. However, which NASCAR driver has the most wins at Talladega? The answer won’t surprise you due to their previous success in the sport.
[autotag]Dale Earnhardt Sr.[/autotag] has 10 victories at Talladega, which makes him the most successful driver at the track in NASCAR history. Earnhardt is the only driver to have more than six Cup Series victories at the venue, as other notable drivers, such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon, carry six wins to their name. Earnhardt’s last win at Talladega came in 2000.
As for the active NASCAR driver with the most wins at Talladega, Brad Keselowski holds the lead with six victories. The next closest driver is Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney with three wins so Keselowski’s place at the top of the current winners at Talladega has no threat for the foreseeable future.
NASCAR fans are already calling these the best throwback paint schemes this year.
Ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series’ Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday, teams and their drivers are revealing their old-school paint schemes, which are part of the throwback tradition of this race weekend.
It’s a chance for drivers to celebrate their own racing roots, honor previous drivers of their cars or pay tribute to legends of the sport. And while several teams have some great looks for their cars this weekend, it’s likely none will top the duo of Trackhouse Racing’s two cars, driven by Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez.
For their throwback paint schemes, Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet and Suárez’s No. 99 Chevrolet, with the help of sponsor Coca-Cola, will celebrate Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr. with an homage to the cars the father-son duo raced at an exhibition event at Japan’s Twin Ring Motegi on November 22, 1998. Though it was an exhibition race, it was the first time Earnhardt Sr. and Earnhardt Jr. competed in Cup cars against each other.
In that race, Dale Sr. was behind the wheel of his iconic No. 3 Chevrolet, while Dale Jr. was in the No. 1 Chevrolet. Both were sponsored by Coca-Cola too. And Chastain’s and Suárez’s throwback paint schemes are nearly identical to the Earnhardts’ rides from 24 years ago.
NASCAR fans, and specifically Earnhardt fans, are sure to love these looks when they hit the track Sunday. And Dale Jr. loved it too when Trackhouse co-owner and founder Justin Marks unveiled the schemes to him recently during this week’s episode of the Dale Jr. Download podcast.
“The No. 1 almost takes my breath [away],” Earnhardt told Marks. “It’s the car. When you do throwbacks… it’s really unique. It’s almost like an eclipse when you can do the sponsor, the colors and the numbers in right font and everything. That’s the car.
“And you’re in a unique position to include both cars, so it’s such a special thing. I don’t know if you’ll ever have that all come together like that again.”
Referenced in both the podcast episode and clip above, the Earnhardts’ race in Japan is infamous for what happened after: Dale Sr. threw a shoe at Dale Jr. As we’ve previously written, the pair got into it a little bit on the track, and things escalated afterward in their trailer.
As Earnhardt Jr. explained to then-podcast co-host Tyler Overstreet in 2017:
“It went right by my head though – very close. I was looking down untying or tying my shoes, and it came by at a high rate of speed. It would have hurt if it had hit me.”
“Do you think that situation would have escalated if he had connected?” Overstreet asked.
“I know his aim ain’t that great, so I think his intention was to hit me because it came pretty close. But God, man – if it’d had hit me, then we would have both been pissed. That wouldn’t have been good.”
But regardless of flying shoes, Trackhouse’s throwback paint schemes for Darlington this weekend are fantastic, and NASCAR fans raved about them, with some declaring them the best paint schemes of the weekend already.
Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo went for the ride of a lifetime Saturday at Circuit of the Americas, the Austin track which will host the United States Grand Prix on Sunday.
The 32-year-old McLaren driver from Australia was already having a great time embracing all things Texas this week, including busting out his southern accent impression. But this definitely has to be a major highlight of Ricciardo’s trip to the U.S.
He got behind the wheel of the 1984 Wrangler Chevrolet Monte Carlo once driven by the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., a hero of Ricciardo’s, and hit the track. With a massive smile on his face, Ricciardo rode around in the vintage car and even did a burnout on the track with it.
His prize for his first podium for @McLarenF1 was a drive in his hero Dale Earnhardt's iconic 1984 Chevrolet, which is now owned by Zak Brown#USGP 🇺🇸 #F1pic.twitter.com/BT6Wm4XLqt
And Dale Earnhardt Jr. loved it too and tweeted: “I’m happy for Daniel. I’m also appreciative for how he celebrates my father. That makes a lot of dads family members and fans smile.”
Ricciardo’s unique ride around COTA all started as a bet between him and the head of McLaren Racing, Zak Brown, who owns the car as part of his personal collection. As Jalopnik previously noted, when Ricciardo joined his new F1 team, he and Brown wagered that if he could get a podium finish this season, he’d get to drive a car from Brown’s collection.
Then Ricciardo ended up winning the Italian Grand Prix in September, and a deal is a deal.
When you get behind the wheel of the car once driven by your racing hero. 🤩
More recently, Dale Jr. opened up about some of the fears he still has regarding Dale Sr. and his legacy, hoping that neither are ever forgotten by the NASCAR world and beyond.
On the latest episode of The Artist and The Athlete with Lindsay Czarniak — a new podcast that pairs up athletes and musicians for in-depth chats — Earnhardt explained to Darius Rucker, a longtime NASCAR fan, and Czarniak how he’s come to view Dale Sr.’s legacy and why he doesn’t like comparisons between his father and other drivers.
On the podcast, Dale Jr. said:
“I think when Dad died, my fear was that there would be a day where people would not remember his impact, and to me, he’s this big, huge thing, right? And in the moment of his life, he was this big, huge thing to a lot of people, and when he died, I saw him everywhere on TV. People that I never thought would be talking about my dad were talking about him. So he was bigger than I even thought, right, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
“But I was just always scared, like, ‘Man, I hope they don’t ever forget the essence of him and his personality and his impact, what it felt like when he walked in a room and what it felt like when he was out on the track.’ And he just had this — he changed the mood. So I’ve kind of always been scared of that.
“And so I don’t want his records to get — I don’t want people to beat his records. I don’t like when anybody’s compared to him. It gets under my skin when somebody says, ‘He’s the next Dale Earnhardt.’ There’s no, no, no, no — never another Dale Earnhardt. I’m protective of it a bit, I think. But I’ve also been really happily surprised about how his legacy’s lived on and how people still remember him. … It’s been nice to see that.”
Dale Sr.’s biggest NASCAR records include seven championships — a mark Richard Petty set in 1979 and Jimmie Johnson tied in 2016. And The Intimidator is still No. 8 on the all-time wins list with 76 checkered flags, while Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick are in a two-way tie for No. 9 distantly behind Earnhardt with 58 career wins each.
On the recent podcast episode, Earnhardt and Rucker also discussed songwriting, their favorite race tracks, fatherhood and their competitive sides.
One of the latest drivers to reveal this year’s throwback paint scheme is Jeffrey Earnhardt, whose No. 0 JD Motorsports Chevrolet will honor his late grandfather, Dale Earnhardt Sr., in the Xfinity Series race on May 8.
For the 1996 All-Star Race, Earnhardt Sr.’s iconic No. 3 Chevrolet ran an Olympic-themed paint scheme ahead of the Games in Atlanta that year. So for Darlington’s throwback weekend this season in an unusual Olympics year, Jeffrey’s car will run a similar look.
The second-tier Xfinity Series’ Steakhouse Elite 200 is Saturday, May 8 and followed by the premier Cup Series’ Goodyear 400 that Sunday.
In a statement about the paint scheme reveal from JD Motorsports on Wednesday, Jeffrey Earnhardt said:
“Man, this ForeverLawn Chevrolet is beautiful. Any time I get the chance to honor my family’s history in the sport, I jump at the opportunity. I remember seeing this car that my grandfather drove as a kid, and I loved it. Throwback Weekend is always something I look forward to each year, and I’m so happy that we get to be a part of it once again.”
Here’s a closer look at Earnhardt’s No. 0 car for the Darlington weekend — they are digital mockups of the car — and how the two paint schemes compare.
Dale Jr. said he plans to take this old-school car to Darlington Raceway’s throwback weekend.
For years, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been working to restore a vintage car that once his late father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., raced in the mid-1980s in the second-tier Xfinity Series (then known as the Busch Grand National Series).
And judging by the videos Junior shared of himself behind the wheel, the car looks pretty great. Good thing, too, because the 46-year-old NASCAR driver turned NBC Sports broadcaster and NASCAR said that the old-school car will hit the track for Darlington Raceway’s throwback weekend in May and lead the pace laps for the Xfinity Series race.
Dale Jr. announced in 2019 that he bought his dad’s black No. 8 Chevrolet Nova, and since then, he’s been intensively restoring it. And thoroughly documenting the process on Twitter.
As Junior explained during a 2019 episode of his podcast, the Dale Jr. Download, he had his eye on this car for a while, but wasn’t sure if it was the real deal. He said bought it at an auction — with some help from Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick — for $190,000 and was eventually able to authenticate it, in part thanks to old photos like the one of Earnhardt as a child sitting in the car.
On that same podcast episode, Dale Jr. also said the car was originally a Pontiac Ventura but eventually, “they cut the nose off the car and made it a Nova.” And for about two years, Earnhardt has been working to restore the 1984 car that Dale Sr. won six Xfinity races with.
Recently, Dale Jr. took it out for a ride and posted the videos to his extensive restoration Twitter thread Friday.
This NASCAR season, there are two race weekends planned for Darlington, and the first one, in May, will serve as the track’s traditional throwback weekend.
From Dale Earnhardt Sr. to Ryan Newman, here’s how NASCAR responded to some of it’s worst wrecks with safety advancements.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Newman has no memory of his spectacularly violent crash during the last lap of the 2020 Daytona 500.
He doesn’t remember the team of NASCAR first responders who helped save his life after his No. 6 Ford flipped, landed upside down and slid on the track with fire and sparks shooting out of it. He doesn’t recall firefighters extinguishing the flames, a paramedic crawling into his upside-down car to assess his condition or how the safety team rolled his car over before severing the roof, extracting him and getting him into an ambulance.
But he knows exactly what happened, thanks to someone compiling a YouTube video with several angles of the crash.
“I’ve watched every angle that I could possibly watch,” Newman said last week. “The biggest problem is I don’t have any memory of my own angle, which is the ultimate angle. And that’s gone, and that will always be gone no matter how many times I watch a replay or different variations of that replay.”
https://youtu.be/p11IUYaf4XM?t=30
He said he studies his own wrecks, as well as ones he’s not involved in, for one major reason: safety. Aided in part by his engineering degree from Purdue, he’s one of the most relentless and vocal safety advocates in the NASCAR garage.
It has been 20 years since Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in a wreck at the Daytona 500, and the cars are clearly much safer. That crash led to dramatic changes, just as Newman’s incident forced NASCAR to investigate what happened last year and respond with safety advancements and adjusted practices.
“I’ve lost some good friends,” Newman said, specifically mentioning Kenny Irwin Jr., who died in 2000 after crashing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Irwin was one of three drivers in NASCAR’s three national series to die that year as the result of a crash, along with Adam Petty and Tony Roper.
“We will always continue to learn from those that we lose and those that we don’t lose, as long as we keep focused on the things that we need to to increase our level of safety.”
Rescuing Ryan Newman
It took just shy of 16 minutes from the time Newman’s car stopped sliding on its roof and came to a stop to get the driver out and into an ambulance. He was taken to a nearby Daytona Beach hospital, put in a medically induced coma and suffered what he described as a “brain bruise.” He was released from the hospital less than 48 hours after the wreck.
Ryan Newman and his daughters leaving Halifax Medical Center less than two days after his 2020 Daytona 500 crash.(Roush Racing via AP)
About 200 first responders, including firefighters and medical personnel, are on the roster at Daytona International Speedway, and they’re trained to handle a variety of incidents. And really, they have to be, especially when the iconic track is famous for its wrecks in an already inherently violent sport.
In those 16 minutes, the track services crew put out the flames and worked on the car, and the NASCAR AMR safety team — which includes paramedics, physicians and neurologists — tended to Newman, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said.
The only moment Newman wasn’t being treated in that time frame was when they rolled the car over before extracting him.
“Prior to Daytona of last year, [the safety team] met in Daytona, and they practiced a rollover procedure, which was great,” said NASCAR vice president of racing operations John Bobo. “It instills that muscle memory that allows emergency responders to respond when they need [to].”
Bobo compared it to an orchestra, which would make Todd Marshall the conductor.
As manager of NASCAR’s track services, Marshall watched Newman’s crash unfold from race control in the tower above Daytona International Speedway. As soon as the cars began wrecking, he said he began to estimate where Newman’s car and the others would ultimately stop so the emergency response teams would know precisely where to go on the 2.5-mile track.
“What made it complex was the individual processes,” Marshall, a retired fire and rescue captain, said via email. “The crews had to handle a roll-over procedure, a vehicle extrication and driver extraction of a driver who is injured. These steps by themselves are low frequency events throughout a race season, [but] the on-track personnel handled each one in succession, as they are trained and had a positive outcome.
“The other area that makes an incident like this a little more complex is [the] span of control with the number of people operating on the incident scene, and the crews performed well.”
[lawrence-related id=896798]
Preparation and communication are crucial, Marshall added, and his and others’ experiences working in fire and rescue services enable them to respond to wrecks calmly and purposefully. He said he wasn’t scared, but simply concerned for Newman’s life.
NASCAR’s track services crew prepares for moments like this through training totaling 55 hours, 41 of which are hands-on and completed annually, Marshall noted. They further prepare with track-specific training about 60 days before an event, Bobo said, and all those rehearsals attempt to anticipate a huge variety of scenarios with the help of training cars.
“We bring out stock cars with fire pans under and will light them on fire,” Bobo said. “We will actually take people through practice extractions of cutting the windshields. … We’ll have our ER physicians practice procedures while upside down hanging in a car. So we do everything we can think of.”
Responding, investigating and adapting
Established safety systems worked as designed to save Newman, but NASCAR wants to guard against complacency. Earnhardt’s death two decades ago “accelerated” NASCAR’s effort to innovate and adjust, O’Donnell said.
“It took something that should have been proactively worked on, and we learned,” Newman said of Earnhardt’s accident. “And it was like, ‘OK, that’s it. That’s the last straw. We need to do something here.’ There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of it is because of who it was, but that’s the way life works.”
Dale Earnhardt slammed into the wall while he getting hit by Ken Schrader in a crash that killed him during the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. (AP Photo/Bob Sweeten)
In the years following the legendary seven-time champion’s death, NASCAR made major adjustments to its safety rules, including drivers being required to wear full-face helmets, plus a head and neck restraint called the HANS device. The governing body also eventually mandated tracks install SAFER barriers designed to absorb the energy of a crash. More recently in 2015, NASCAR began requiring seven‑ or nine‑point restraints on seat belts to further restrict how much gravity can pull drivers out of their seats if the car is upside down.
“The culture is what Dale Earnhardt changed,” O’Donnell said. Since Earnhardt’s death, no drivers in NASCAR’s three national series have died as the result of a crash.
“Certainly, the HANS device and SAFER barriers were huge,” O’Donnell continued. “But it’s our ability to, each and every day, talk about technology, talk about safety and continue to have people in the industry approach us about those ideas versus just talking about how to make the car go faster.”
Prior to last year’s crash, Newman already had a significant impact on NASCAR safety with what’s known as the “Newman Bar.” After multiple scary wrecks at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway involving Newman — plus his lobbying of NASCAR — a reinforcement was added to the roll cage in 2013 to further protect the driver.
Ryan Newman slides upside down on the track after crashing with Kevin Harvick at Talladega Superspeedway in 2009. (AP Photo/Mark Young)
Following an investigation into the 2020 Daytona 500 last-lap crash, NASCAR’s safety enhancements included mandating two additional roll bars and a reinforced driver’s seat window net and mounting, which is designed to keep the drivers and their body parts inside the car in the event of a crash.
“We’ve really had access to incredibly powerful new tools, new sensors and new analysis tools,” said Dr. John Patalak, NASCAR senior director of safety and engineering. “We’ve been able to capture more data. It makes us smarter, we can make better decisions and we always have different ongoing research safety projects. …
“Computer modeling is a really big advancement for us and will allow us to really dive deep into certain things that we were blind to in the past, that the crash test dummies just couldn’t tell us.”
For on-track first responders, resting roof training for an upside down car has been more widespread at NASCAR’s tracks, Bobo said, and new discoveries or safety developments are detailed at a safety and racing operation summit at the beginning of each year.
Looking ahead to NASCAR’s Next-Gen car — which was originally scheduled to debut this season but was pushed back a year because of COVID-19-related challenges — NASCAR senior vice president of racing development John Probst said there are several updates that are new to stock cars, including front- and rear-crash structures reinforced with foam.
Probst said more than 4,000 crash simulations have been completed for the new car. Later this year, with the help of the University of Nebraska, NASCAR will crash the car into a SAFER barrier to see how it holds up against the simulations, looking for new ways to improve the structure.
“When something like this has happened, the most productive emotion is curiosity,” Bobo said. “So we have been as curious as possible about everything that we’ve done. How can we do it better?”
And Dale Jr. shared a story that he described as “the most important moment in my life with my dad.” He said it was an unplanned exchange with his father that he feels “very lucky” to have had, especially since it happened within a year before Dale Sr.’s tragic death.
Earnhardt said he was writing a column for a popular racing magazine called the Winston Cup Scene because he loves to write, express himself and share his side of stories.
“One night, for some reason, I sat down by myself, and I wrote this sort of essay about Dad and what he meant to me,” Dale Jr. said on Danica’s Pretty Intense podcast. “And it took me no time at all to write this, and it just poured out with so much ease. And I was extremely proud of it.”
He said he’s not sure exactly when this happened but guessed it was a few months before Dale Sr. died. He explained:
“And so I was like, ‘I’m gonna take this, and I’m gonna publish it in this thing. And everybody’s gonna read it, and everybody’s gonna know how I feel about my dad.’ But I was scared to do it without asking him. You don’t do anything about Dad, with Dad, with the use of his name or anything without going to him and saying, ‘Hey, is this OK?’
“So I asked him if I could see him for a second. He’s up in his office at [Dale Earnhardt, Inc.]. I go up there with that piece of paper, and I said, ‘Hey, I got this thing I wrote, and it’s about you. I want to put it in the Winston Cup Scene in a couple weeks, and I just need to make sure you’re OK with it.’
“And he takes it, and he reads it, and he stands up, and he starts walking around reading it. And it’s only, you know, about a page. And he stops at the end, and he takes a minute. And he says, ‘You know, we never tell each other how we feel about each other, but in reading this, I know exactly how you feel.’
“And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I was like, ‘Man, that’s exactly how I feel about you, and I didn’t know you didn’t know that — you know, that I thought you were this great, amazing thing.’
“And he was like, ‘I’m so glad you did this. I’m so glad you shared this with me.’ He doesn’t talk this way.”
At this point, Patrick said she was choking up about the story and was glad Dale Jr. was doing all the talking. He continued:
“It was amazing! And so he’s like, ‘You can’t use this in this publication. You’ve gotta save this for a book or something.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not saving this! This is how I feel right now, and I want everybody to know it. So I’m gonna put it out there.’ And I did.
“But anyhow, I think had that not happened — had I not had that written — that moment is the most important moment in my life with my dad, without a doubt. We had won races together and stood in Victory Lane together, but to know that he knew how I felt about him is really important because knowing that he would pass away many months later. …
“Had I never got to share that with him, man, that would be tough going the rest of my life wondering if — I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. Every believes what they want to believe, and I kind of have my beliefs, and I don’t know what they are sometimes. I don’t know what to believe or what to expect. But if I was to never cross paths with him again and he’d leave this world without being able to share that with him would be so hard. I’d be in such a harder place in spending all these last 20 years without him.”
While Johnson’s teammates are honoring him with their cars before he retires from full-time NASCAR racing at the end of the 2020 season, the No. 48 Chevrolet driver is paying tribute with his paint scheme to the two seven-time champions who came before him: Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
And he even dressed the part before Sunday night’s Southern 500.
The glasses are just like the iconic ones often worn by the late Earnhardt, while the hat, feathers included, resembles the one Petty still regularly wears to the track.
Although the Southern 500 was the first race of the Cup Series playoffs, Johnson was not among the 16 drivers who made the cut in his final season before retiring from full-time racing.
Kevin Harvick celebrated his Atlanta win Sunday the same way he did his first one in 2001.
Despite now having 51 NASCAR Cup Series wins, Kevin Harvick won only his third race at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday. But he celebrated that victory the same way he did the first two.
Harvick dominated the end of the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 to win his second race of the season after taking his first checkered flag of 2020 in May at Darlington Raceway at NASCAR’s first race back after a 10-week hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. His 51st win breaks his tie on the all-time wins list with Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett, and he now stands alone ranked No. 12.
And when Harvick completed 500.5 miles Sunday, he did a lap (in the opposite direction) at the 1.5-mile track while holding up three fingers out his window — a continued tribute to the late Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Harvick won his first Cup Series race at the Atlanta track back in 2001 just three races after he replaced Earnhardt, who tragically died on the last lap of the season-opening Daytona 500 that year. After that win, Harvick held his three fingers out the window to honor Earnhardt, who piloted the iconic No. 3 Chevrolet.
It took 17 years after Harvick’s first win at Atlanta for him to drive to Victory Lane again, but when he did at the beginning of the 2018 season, he celebrated again with his three-finger salute to Earnhardt.
Harvick — who now has a 48-point lead at the top of the driver standings over Joey Logano — said after the race:
“I didn’t get to show [the salute] very good a couple years ago with my gloves on, so I made sure I took my gloves off this year. Obviously, first win came for me here at Atlanta and this is just a race track that I’ve taken a liking to, and you always come back and have those memories. And now you want to celebrate everything that Dale Earnhardt did for this sport. To come here and be able to do that with wins and go to Victory Lane is pretty special.”
