The Debate: Top Driver in NASCAR History Never to Have Won a Cup Championship

• OK, who is the greatest NASCAR Cup driver never to have won a Cup Championship?

• We asked a dozen retired and active NASCAR beat writers for their opinion.

• We polled team owners, industry insiders, radio/TV broadcasters, and track operators.

• See if you agree with the Big Three.

Let’s have a debate. Not an argument, but a debate. Civil. Thoughtful. Respectful. Facts, not shady distortions of the truth. On an intellectual level … if there’s any such thing these days. Let’s keep it clean.

The topic: Best NASCAR driver—past or present—never to have won a Cup Series championship.

Three logical candidates: the late Junior Johnson; the long-retired Mark Martin; or current championship Playoff contender Denny Hamlin. But voters are allowed—encouraged, even—to nominate anyone outside that threesome. Surely, there must be others who came close but never won the big trophy.

We asked a dozen retired and active NASCAR beat writers for their opinion. We polled team owners, industry insiders, radio/TV broadcasters, and track operators. We even polled a random fan or two. In total, their experience around the sport on an almost-daily basis reaches almost 500 years. (Our four Autoweek contributors alone totaled almost 175 years). Nobody on the panel ever worked with Hamlin, Martin, or Johnson, although most had covered them closely during the past 50-plus years.

These stats are helpful, but certainly don’t tell the full story:

Big Three: Mark Martin, Denny Hamlin, Junior Johnson

Hamlin: 40 poles and 50 victories in 641 starts; three Daytona 500s; a Coca-Cola 600; a Southern 500; two Talladega victories; a NASCAR all-star victory; 14 top-10 points seasons; victories at 19 different tracks; 2006 Rookie of the Year, all accomplished with Joe Gibbs Racing;

Martin: 56 poles and 40 victories in 882 starts at 20 tracks; five points runner-up seasons and four third-place seasons; 17 top-10 points seasons; Southern 500, Coca-Cola 500, and Talladega 500 victories; won on road courses, superspeedways, short tracks, and intermediate tracks; 35 victories with Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing, five with Hendrick Motorsports;

Johnson: 46 poles and 50 victories in 313 starts; four top-10 points seasons while never running the full schedule; only 12 of 50 victories came on current tracks; won the second Daytona 500 on a day when it was widely reported he “discovered” drafting (others dispute that); best points finish was sixth in 1955 and 1961; he spent parts of the 1956-1957 in an Ohio prison after being caught, tried, and convicted of moonshining.

Among the comments from the panel regarding the greatest driver without a championship:

• “Easily, Mark Martin. A five-time championship runner-up, four-time third-place finisher. Honorable mention: Carl Edwards. Ironically, both had title hopes dashed by NASCAR points penalties to their Jack Roush-owned cars that had no bearing on race worthiness: Martin, an intake manifold spacer at Richmond in 1990 and Edwards, an oil tank lid at Las Vegas in 2008.”