Some NASCAR tracks suit specific Cup Series drivers. Many drivers have incredible streaks of domination at certain tracks that cannot be matched. Today, we look at the most dominant drivers at the current NASCAR Cup Series tracks.
Jimmie Johnson carried the banner at multiple race tracks during his time in NASCAR. Coincidentally, three of these four tracks were in the Chase while Jimmie Johnson was winning his Championships, and wins at places like Dover and Texas often preceded Championship runs. He also put together three consecutive wins at Las Vegas from 2005 through 2007.
Richard Petty is “The King” of stock car racing, and over a quarter of his 200 career wins came at these four race tracks. This includes seven victories in the “Great American Race”, the Daytona 500. He also succeeded at historic tracks such as Martinsville, North Wilkesboro, and Richmond, which are each near the heart of NASCAR.
David Pearson is the pride of Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his home state track of Darlington is where he made his hay. He won 10 races there and brought Mercury, a Ford brand, nine wins at Michigan, a track that Ford has historically been strong at.
Dale Earnhardt was arguably the greatest restrictor plate racer to ever live, and his record at Talladega proves that. He won four races in a row at the track in the 1980s, and his last career win in 2000 was quintessential Earnhardt. He also has an incredible record at Atlanta, which, oddly enough, was the track that held the season finale when he was on his hot streak in the early 1990s.
Jeff Gordon moved to Indiana as a teenager to pursue racing but chose NASCAR instead of IndyCar. When he finally got the chance to race in Indianapolis, he dominated, winning five times in 21 races, including the first Brickyard 400. His birth home in Northern California has also been good to him, as he has the most wins of any NASCAR driver there.
Denny Hamlin’s career at Pocono started with a bang, sweeping the two races in 2006. Since then, he’s been a force to be reckoned with there, with seven career wins, and he could have had eight if he had not failed post-race inspection in 2022. Kansas Speedway has also been kind to Hamlin recently, with four wins plus two wins as an owner.
Darrell Waltrip was in his own zip code at Bristol Motor Speedway. In the early 1980s, he won seven consecutive races there and added five more in his storied career. No driver loved a race track more than D.W. loved Bristol.
Tony Stewart’s prowess on road courses was prevalent throughout his career. His best was Watkins Glen, as he won five times in eight seasons between 2002 and 2009.
No one has had a streak of dominance in modern NASCAR like Kevin Harvick at Phoenix. He won six times in eight races there from the fall of 2012 through the spring of 2016 and recorded a top-10 in each of his final 21 races there.
Homestead-Miami (Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, and Denny Hamlin) and New Hampshire (Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton) have multiple drivers tied for the most wins at the venue. The most dominant stretch at Homestead came from 2004 through 2006 as Greg Biffle won the season finale three years in a row. Burton won at New Hampshire once every year from 1997 through 2000, including leading all 300 laps in his final win at the track in 2000.
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Another race weekend in the books. While Ryan Blaney battled back from several pit road setbacks to win his second straight race at Phoenix, other drivers were much to be desired. It was a big win for Penske but for several others, they leave the first “real” race of the season scratching their head with a lot that they need to figure out. Here are the biggest losers of NASCAR’s Spring 2026 Phoenix race weekend.
I’m afraid that this is starting to be habitual. Another race weekend at RCR for Kyle Busch, another terrible result. Well, the finish wasn’t exactly awful. While 17th is hardly up to Kyle’s standards, it’s about as good as it gets anymore for the two-time champion who hasn’t won a race in nearly a hundred starts.
To start things off, there was a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of that RCR No. 8 Chevy. New crew chief. Personnel changes. A new Chevy body. He even scored the pole for the 68th running of the Daytona 500 last month. But, since then, it has been a sharp slope downward. He was mostly a non-factor in the first three races. And, today, it seemed like the No. 8 Chevy was out to lunch. They unloaded slow. They qualified in the back of the pack. And, before Stage 1 even ended, Kyle was running 34th with no apparent issues and went a lap down to leader Ryan Blaney. To add insult to injury, Kyle Bush had a tire go down on him three times today. More than any other driver. It appears to be back to the drawing board for team No. 8.
You could say that the Hendrick No. 48 team had a rough weekend in general. But I think it would be more accurate to say that the entire start to 2026 has been catastrophic. Heading into today’s race, even with Bowman starting the first three races of the season, the No. 48 team was 36th in points, last among all full-time drivers. Even Cody Ware was ahead of him. If that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.
To rub salt in the wound, their driver missed today at Phoenix due to showing symptoms of vertigo. So, Anthony Alfredo was into sub and…it went about as well as you’d expect. He went a lap down early and never recovered. He got caught up in the incident involving Joey Logano and DNF’d. Officially, they scored a 33rd finishing position. This is the worst start Bowman could ever imagine, considering that he’s in a contract year.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve lost my marbles. “Come on, dude! Penske just swept the weekend! How can they be losers?” Hear me out. Let’s start first with the two other Penske drivers, shall we? Joey Logano caused not one, but two multi-car pileups, one involving his Penske teammate, Austin Cindric. Cars were utterly destroyed. Before that, both Cindric and Logano were running solidly in the top 10.
So, it’s not for a lack of speed that they make our Biggest Losers list. The reason they’re listed here is that a lot of their problems today, if not all of them, were self-inflicted. Logano was driving sloppily and that took out Cindric. And even race winner Ryan Blaney almost lost this race on pit road numerous times. Rookie mistakes by the pit crew constantly had him charging from behind. Pit road penalties. He was like a yo-yo going back and forth throughout the field. What saved him in the end was that, on that last restart, Blaney took two tires and Christopher Bell took 4. If that had not happened, it is extremely possible that Blaney ultimately would have lost the race and it would have been because of their numerous mistakes in the pits.
They got lucky this week. They probably won’t get that lucky again. They need to clean up those nagging, senseless mistakes.
Ole, Danny boy. If Alex Bowman’s seat is the hottest in the series, Daniel Suarez has to be the second hottest in the garage. That No. 7 car has been a revolving door of drivers for the last several years and it looks like Suarez is shaping up to be Spire’s latest victim. It’s the same old story with the team: they show impressive speed in qualifying and even early on in the race. But rarely do they ever put a full race together. That criticism isn’t just for Suarez, it applies to the team across the board.
But Carson Hocevar is the team’s golden child. He’s not going anywhere. And the team seems pretty high on Michael McDowell at the moment. That leaves Suarez looking like the odd man out, a seat-warmer, if you will. He needs to perform. And, he’s done well to start, admittedly. But he qualified 5th for today’s race. He even earned a few stage points in the opening stage. Then, he faltered and left the race with an unceremonious whimper. Ultimately, after he was no longer a factor, he was caught up in a mid-race wreck. He finished 30th. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the Mexican-born driver. If he wants to keep his ride next year, he needs to show stark improvement in the coming weeks. I have a strong feeling that that ride is about to be a highly sought-after commodity once silly season rolls around.
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The first checkered flag of the 2026 rendition of the NASCAR West Coast Swing (as abbreviated as it is) has officially flown. It was an exciting race, full of close, tight-cornered racing, a plethora of tire issues littered throughout, and a couple of heartbreaking, hard hits. Surviving it all was Ryan Blaney, who captured the flag in the Straight Talk 500 at Phoenix Raceway. He survived pit road mishaps and passed a total of 49 cars to win the race today. It marks his 18th career victory, sweeping the weekend for Team Penske. So, for Blaney and Team Penske, the race was the highest of highs. Not everyone escaped unscathed, though. Here are the key takeaways from NASCAR’s spring date at Phoenix.
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Following a relatively clean first stage, Stage number 2 and beyond was littered with cautions. Most of these cautions were a result of tires going down after only about 20 laps or so of use. But the caution on Lao 216 was purely driver error. Joey Logano, who was running 7th at the time, made a move down on the apron approaching the finish line. Chaos ensued. Here’s what happened.
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