On Sunday, Jimmie Johnson won his 6th NASCAR Sprint Cup Driver Championship. Which brings up the question, is he the best driver ever? Let’s look into the numbers. The record for the most Sprint/NEXTEL/Winston Cup driver championships ever is 7, with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt tied at the top of the list. Johnson is next with 6, Jeff Gordon has 4 titles, and 5 drivers have won 3 championships.
Number of championships is probably the easiest way to judge who is the best driver, but not the only measure. If we look at the number of total race wins, Petty is clearly the most dominant, almost lapping the field with 200 wins. Back in the earlier days of NASCAR, they ran a lot more races than they do now. David Pearson is 2nd in all-time wins with 105. 119 of Petty’s wins, and 58 of Pearson’s wins came before the Winston Cup Series was even started in 1971.
Gordon, who is 3rd on the all-time list, actually has the most wins since the advent of the Winston Cup Series with 88 on both lists. Darrell Waltrip would be next with 84 wins, Petty is 3rd with 81, and Earnhardt 4th with 76 wins since the Cup Series started. Johnson ranks 8th on the all-time list, and tied for 6th since 1971 with Bobby Allison, with all 66 of his wins coming since 2002. Allison is tied for 4th on the all-time list with 84 wins, Cale Yarborough is 6th with 83, and Earnhardt 7th with 76 career wins.
After looking at number of championships, career wins, and race wins since the Cup series began in 1971, I would have to say Petty is still the best, and Earnhardt is in 2nd place, especially since his career was cut short at 49, in his fatal wreck at the Daytona 500 in 2001. However, Johnson is only 38 years old. Earnhardt actually won 4 of his 7 championships after age 38. At this point, I would say Johnson is the 3rd best driver of all time, but he should be racing for many years to come. Gordon still races, but hasn’t won a championship since 2001.
One thing you can definitely say about Johnson, is that he is the king of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Since the Chase has started in 2004, has won all of his titles, which means that he has won 6 of the 10 years that the Chase has been in effect. Even non-math majors can figure out that’s an astounding 60%. He also has the record for most consecutive championships with 5, from 2006-2010. If Johnson is even close to this dominant in future years, the magic number of 7 championships will fall in the next 4 or 5 years. He will never reach Petty’s total of 200 wins, but he could also end up with the record for most race wins since the Winston Cup started in 1971. So my answer to the question of whether Jimmie Johnson is the best driver ever, is not yet.
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