With Chase Briscoe‘s victory in the 2024 Southern 500, eight drivers have ended winless streaks of 40 races or more this season, more than any other year in NASCAR Cup Series history.
Racecar drivers never know when a win will be their last, so breaking out of such lengthy droughts is always a satisfying accomplishment.
Throughout the history of the Cup Series, nearly every driver has experienced a winless run of some kind. Some of them were entirely unexpected and the eventual end of the streak seemed inevitable. Others befell a driver who seemed likely to finish their career without adding to their win total. But fortunately for each of these drivers, their prolific winless run came to an end.
Dale Earnhardt had one of the most well-known extended gaps between victories. In 1996, the Intimidator won two of the first four races, the second of which was the March event at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It seemed impossible to imagine Earnhardt not winning again for the next 59 races, but that’s exactly what happened.
One of those races was the 1996 Diehard 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, during which Earnhardt suffered a broken collarbone in a massive crash. His performance diminished, as he only had two top-five results for the rest of the year. But he wasn’t entirely uncompetitive during his winless stretch. Six of those 59 races saw the black No. 3 finish second. Not to mention, the streak added another dimension of relief when it finally ended with Dale’s 1998 Daytona 500 win.
His son wasn’t immune to lengthy win droughts either. During the height of Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s popularity, he made the highly publicized move to Hendrick Motorsports for 2008. He won the Bud Shootout (the Busch Clash now) and the June race at Michigan International Speedway that season. But the wins didn’t start piling up as many had expected.
The losses certainly started stacking up though. Earnhardt Jr. was shut out of the winner’s circle for the rest of 2008, and three more winless seasons followed. In 2012, the June race at Michigan turned out to be his saving grace yet again, breaking the 143-race dry spell. Earnhardt went onto win seven more times before retiring from full-time racing at the end of 2017.
But in terms of the longest stretches between wins, few come close to the gap that Bill Elliott had to endure. Elliott started 227 Cup Series events between his 1994 victory in the Southern 500 and the end of his run of futility….
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