{"id":31926,"date":"2025-07-02T06:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T06:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31926\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T06:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T06:44:11","slug":"summoning-nascars-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31926\/","title":{"rendered":"Summoning NASCAR’s Ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure: this week\u2019s installment didn\u2019t go quite the way I had planned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I enjoy statistical research. The numbers, depending on how you interpret them, tell us something vital about NASCAR\u2019s past and present. So I delved into a set of numbers looking for some very specific answers.<\/p>\n

What it turned into was something entirely different: a reminder that racing is, and always will be, primarily about the people. The fast cars and iconic locations are an essential backdrop, but the stories always come back to the people.<\/p>\n

How It Started<\/p>\n

With a dozen different winners already on the books for 2025, are we in the most unpredictable era of NASCAR in terms of the number of drivers visiting victory lane each year? Many fans will say there are more teams capable of winning races now than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That plays out to a point \u2014 there have been some pretty high winner totals in the 21st\u00a0century overall, but it\u2019s not a huge trend. In general, with a few outliers in either direction, 12-16 or so seems to be a pretty consistent average throughout the sport\u2019s history with only one notable exception: the modern era 1970s. Then, there were no more than nine different winners a year from 1972-79. The early \u201980s picked it up by a couple, and by 1986, the numbers swung back up and have held steady.<\/p>\n

The last year to see fewer than 10 winners was 1985.<\/p>\n

The Next Gen car has produced a small upswing, at least partly due to the difficulty teams had with finding consistency in the car in its first three seasons.<\/p>\n

And while there have been two seasons in the playoff era with more than 16 winners, a race winner has yet to miss the postseason title race. The extra winners have gotten it done in the playoff races, after the championship field has been set.<\/p>\n

In short, there wasn\u2019t a lot to be discovered in terms of trends over time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Waid\u2019s World: Many Changes Later, Atlanta Remains Young Writer\u2019s First Challenge<\/p>\n

The surprises came from the research itself.<\/p>\n

How It Went<\/p>\n

Because I apparently like doing things the hard way, when I sat down to count the winners every year from 1949-2024, it didn\u2019t occur to me until sometime in the 1980s that the easy way to do it would have been by looking at the driver standings instead of the season results.<\/p>\n

The long way probably resulted in a mistake or two in the tally, and it was certainly time consuming. But it\u2019s hard to say, after all was said and done, that it was the wrong way.<\/p>\n

If I had done it the easy way, I might have gotten done a little faster. But I would not have found the ghosts.<\/p>\n

What began as scanning each season\u2019s winners and making a tally mark for each different one turned into a roll call of every Cup Series winner. With each year, it became a surprisingly emotional endeavor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seeing a list of names on a screen is about as generic as it gets. Every one of those races has a story, and every one of them deserves to be told, though some have all but been lost to time. So many of the main characters are gone now, and there are fewer first-hand accounts with every passing year.<\/p>\n

Yet, scrolling through those names, one year at a time, they began to weave the framework of it all. Rolling through time, every first and last was laid bare. Some names appeared often for a while, maybe more than some fans would have liked to see them. But they became infrequent after a while and then finally stopped altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Happy Hour: Daniel Suarez Gone While TNT Returns<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, somewhere between the familiar names, a new one would appear. Some only had that one moment, but others began to appear more and more often, the cycle beginning again only to roll on and repeat, over and over again.<\/p>\n

It became more than just a list of names. It became a list of memories. At first and frequently not my own but those which have become part of something more than one person\u2019s recollection:<\/p>\n

Lee Petty<\/a>\u2019s first win, in a career that would eventually become the first part of the first four-generation family to all be a part of the top level of a major American sport. Richard Petty<\/a>\u2019s first win of 200, a mark that will never be touched.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something about a first time win, whether it\u2019s one of 200 or the only one, that elevates it to something more. They\u2019re all there: the Pettys, David Pearson<\/a>, and then Cale<\/a> and Darrell<\/a> and Dale<\/a> and Jeff<\/a> and Tony<\/a> and Jimmie<\/a> and Junior<\/a> and Kyle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Generations pass like the water on a wide river in summer. NASCAR is family, and over the years, the wins of fathers became the wins of their sons, and brothers entered the ultimate sibling rivalry. Generations of Bakers, Earnhardts, Jarretts, Allisons, Elliotts. Brotherhoods of Flocks, Waltrips, Parsonses, Wallaces, Labontes, Burtons and Busches.<\/p>\n

Some races stand out like beacons on the water. Championships clinched, crashes that changed everything. Ol\u2019 DW\u2019s Bristol Motor Speedway dominance and emotional Daytona 500 win. Earnhardt finally winning the 500 and the wave of crewmen waiting to congratulate him. Ned Jarrett<\/a> calling his son Dale<\/a>\u2018s win in that same race.<\/p>\n

And finally, the tide ebbs for even the best. Names appear for one final time; so far nobody has figured out how to slow down time, and it catches up with them all. For some, it happened too soon \u2014 drivers paying the piper with their careers or even their lives. Most of them wouldn\u2019t have changed a thing.<\/p>\n

Some of the races stand out because I was there for them: my first race, a smattering of first wins, Jeff Gordon\u2019s poignant last one.<\/p>\n

Something about that stripped down roll call of every Cup Series winner ever gripped me. Maybe it was a reminder that time moves all too fast and that everything changes. Maybe it was seeing the fabric of NASCAR woven in such a tangible way. But whatever it was, it evoked a deep, visceral feeling that was far more than the article I was researching.<\/p>\n

For a few hours, it was all there, in front of me, memories ripe for the picking.<\/p>\n

Say their names. NASCAR\u2019s ghosts are waiting for you.<\/p>\n

\"Donate<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy\u2019s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace\u2019s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com’s Around the Track page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full disclosure: this week\u2019s installment didn\u2019t go quite the way I had planned.\u00a0 I enjoy statistical research. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-31926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114782290941501206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}