Kyle Larson and the five former Cup Series champions are still looking for their first Daytona 500 victory
It took Dale Earnhardt 20 years of trying to finally win the Daytona 500. Darrell Waltrip needed 17 attempts. Former Cup Series Champions W NASCAR Hall of Famers Terry Labonte, Bobby Labonte, Mark Martin, Terry Labonte Rusty Wallaceand Alan Kulwicki never won the Great American Race.
Does this mean that any of these drivers lack the talent, ability or racing cars to win one or more times quickly in NASCAR’s biggest event? barely.
It’s just a testament to just how difficult the 500 can be to win. In light of this important historical context, here are five active drivers—all former Cup Series champions—who never left Daytona International Speedway with the coveted Harley J. Earl Daytona 500 in hand.
1. Kyle Bush
With 60 Cup Series wins, Kyle Busch is tied with Kevin Harvick for most wins in NASCAR’s premier series among active drivers. But none of those victories have come at the Daytona 500, as Busch is a painful 0-for-17 in NASCAR’s most prestigious event.
The two-time Cup Series champ has come close to winning the 500 on more than one occasion, however, finishing second in 2019 and third in 2016. Of course, those two starts came in Familiar No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota which Busch has been experimenting with for the past 15 years.
This year, he will make his first start in the Daytona 500 and first official start of any kind as a Member of the Richard Childress Race – An organization that achieved 500 victories at Daytona with Austin Dillon, Kevin Harvick and the late Dale Earnhardt.
2. Brad Keselowski
Brad Keselowski is one of the best superspeedsters in the Cup Series, ever Victory Lane In the Daytona 500 despite having a car capable of getting out front and winning on more than one occasion.
Keselowski, who has a total of seven points at the superspeedway—six at Talladega, one at Daytona—took his only win at the World Series pole, as Daytona is known, in July 2016, but he’s still looking for that elusive 500 victory.
Last year, in his first official start for his Roush Fenway Keselowski-owned race, Keselowski He led 67 laps and finished ninth in the 500. His best finish to date in the famous season opener was a third-place result in 2014.
3. Martin Truex Jr.
Martin Truex Jr He suffered one of the closest and most painful defeats in Daytona 500 history when he was crushed at the finish line by just one-hundredth of a second in February 2016.
Truex hasn’t been close to winning the 500 before or since, however, and the veteran driver doesn’t win noticeably in the 35 starts of the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Truex has a second-place finish at Daytona, which came not in the 500 but in the July 2018 race.
It should be noted that Truex is also inexplicably no-win-win Talladega – another super speed for NASCAR – coming up short 36 times.
4. Kyle Larson
Despite being a generation-to-generation talent who is widely considered one of the best drivers in NASCAR today, Kyle Larson He didn’t find the magic formula for success at Daytona—or Talladega, for that matter. Between the two supertracks, Larson is an ugly 0-for-33 in point-paying races.
For the Daytona 500 specifically, Larson’s best finish was seventh—twice—and he led just 18 laps in the WRC. Larson took one heartbreaking defeat in the Daytona 500, however, when he ran out of fuel with one lap left in 2017, handing the win to Kurt Busch.
But former champions are among the active drivers who have never tasted Daytona 500 glory, Larson so far A less impressive record in the 500 and in Daytona in general, after not scoring a top-five finish at the legendary Central Florida facility. Daytona is also the site of the worst crash of Larson’s career, which occurred in an Xfinity Series race at the iconic Superspeedway in 2013.
5. Chase Elliott
Unlike his NASCAR Hall of Fame father, Bill, who won the Daytona 500 not once but twice, Chase Elliott He never managed to bring home the Harley J. Earl Trophy despite always having a fast car in the high banks of Daytona.
The Hendrick Motorsports and 2020 Cup Series driver owns a pair of Daytona 500 poles as well as a pole for the second annual Daytona Cup race, and he posted a Daytona-best finish of second in the fall of 2020 and again next February. Daytona 500.
Elliott’s most heartbreaking seven-attempt Daytona 500 result came in 2017 while only making his second start at the event – when he ran out of stock while with three laps to go and finished 14th.y. Elliott led 39 of the 200 laps in this race, but like every one of his Daytona 500 rides so far, a win wasn’t in the cards for him—now NASCAR’s most popular perennial driver.