NASCAR is celebrating its 75th anniversary all throughout the 2023 season.
In 1998, NASCAR had a panel select a list of its 50 greatest drivers for its golden anniversary.
Likewise, we at Frontstretch decided to put together our own list of the 75 greatest NASCAR drivers in honor of this year’s milestone. Seventeen of our writers weighed in to pick the 75 drivers, and we’ll be releasing four to seven drivers from that list every weekday for the next three weeks.
Similar to the one in 1998, this list is not a ranking of the top-75 drivers. Instead, we’ve broken the list down into categories, with a new category released each day (see the full list below). Within those categories, the drivers are listed in alphabetical order.
The latest edition of this series discusses NASCAR’s original stars, the pioneers of the sport who came before the rest.
Buck Baker
Buck Baker, a former bus driver from the Carolinas, was among the 33 drivers in
the field for NASCAR’s first Strictly Stock race in 1949. It was the beginning of a career that spanned more than 25 years at NASCAR’s highest level.
In that time, Baker racked up 46 wins, 246 top fives, and 372 top 10s.
Baker won Grand National championships in 1956 and 1957, becoming the first driver to win consecutive premier series titles. The first championship came racing for Carl Kiekhaefer’s powerful Chrysler team, with whom Baker won 14 times.
When Kiekhaefer pulled out of NASCAR before the 1957 season, Baker spent most of that season racing for himself. Not only did he win the title again, he also scored 10 victories and finished outside the top 10 only twice in 40 starts.
A fixture on the Grand National tour during its formative years, Baker ran the majority of the season every year from 1953 through 1966. Unlike many of his contemporaries who tended to pick and choose the seasons in which they would regularly compete, Baker put himself in championship contention nearly every year. His career included a run of eight consecutive seasons with top-five points finishes.
While most of Baker’s wins came on short dirt ovals, he was often fast at Darlington Raceway. In 1964, he drove a Ray Fox-prepared Dodge to victory in the Southern 500, his third win in the race and ultimately the final win of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
Baker continued to make sporadic starts into the 1970s, earning his final top 10 at Darlington in 1976 at age 57. He died in April 2002….
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