What’s Happening?

Motorsports is one of the world’s most diverse competition disciplines, and the drivers who participate reflect that. Drivers might specialize in NASCAR but may have come from and won in many other racing disciplines. Today, we look at NASCAR drivers who won in other racing series.

• To be eligible for this list, a driver must have spent an extended amount of time in which NASCAR was their primary form of motorsports. We will establish that at least five full-time NASCAR seasons or 180 starts at any level of the sport.
• To be considered a win from “Another Racing Series,” the series must not be a NASCAR-sanctioned series. This means Cup, Xfinity, Trucks, ARCA, Modifieds, the NASCAR Weekly Series, or international NASCAR series are not eligible.
• Some drivers come to NASCAR after an extended career in other motorsports, whereas others head to other motorsports while competing in NASCAR or after their NASCAR career. Some drivers have more success than others.

Tony Stewart

Tony Stewart grew up racing on dirt tracks in Southern Indiana, dreaming of the Indianapolis 500. When the CART/IRL split occurred in the mid-1990s, Stewart took his chance and ran with it, winning three races and the 1997 IRL Championship. However, NASCAR was too big to pass up on, and Stewart joined full-time in 1999 on the way to a Hall of Fame career.

He still maintained his love for dirt track racing, competing across the country whenever he could. This included triumphs at the biggest dirt midget race of them all, the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Stewart took home the “Golden Driller” twice, first in 2002 and again in 2007.

Juan Pablo Montoya

Juan Pablo Montoya was already a world-renowned racing driver before he came to NASCAR in late 2006. He made his hay in IndyCar through the CART Series, winning the 2000 Championship, 10 races, and the 2000 Indianapolis 500. He then moved on to Formula One, where he nabbed seven victories, including the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix.

While in NASCAR, Montoya won the Rolex 24 at Daytona three times while driving for Chip Ganassi Racing. After NASCAR, he jumped back into IndyCar, winning five more races, including his second Indianapolis 500 in 2015. He also spent time in sports cars, winning multiple times in IMSA. A true jack of all trades in motorsports.

Marcos Ambrose

The original SVG. Marcos Ambrose made the jump from Australian Supercars to NASCAR in 2007, winning five Xfinity Series races and two Cup Series races. In Supercars, Ambrose was one of the top drives of his time.

He won 28 times, including back-to-back Championships in 2003 and 2004. The “Tasmanian Devil”, as he was called, was one of the top road racers of his generation.

Kyle Larson

Kyle Larson loves to race whenever he gets the opportunity. His first love is dirt, and he makes no mistake about that. While he’s won multiple dirt races across multiple race tracks, his greatest accomplishment came in Tulsa.

Larson previously declared that winning the Chili Bowl would be a bigger deal for him than winning the Daytona 500, and he realized his Chili Bowl dream in 2020 and 2021. While his Indy 500 big did not go as planned this past May, could he add that race to his list soon?

Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell also cut his teeth on dirt. In fact, his first NASAR win came on dirt at Eldora in 2015. While Larson was serving for a Chili Bowl win, Bell was the driver to beat.

He became just the second driver to win the Chili Bowl three years in a row, joining Kevin Swindell, who won four consecutively from 2010 through 2013. However, Joe Gibbs is not as keen on his drivers racing outside of JGR, so it’s unclear if we’ll see Bell take home another “Golden Driller”.

Dave Blaney

Before he was a NASCAR driver, Dave Blaney was a top sprint car racing talent. He won 95 races in the World of Outlaws racing through the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1995 Championship. While he made occasional NASCAR starts, he didn’t race full-time until 2000 and went on to make 473 starts.

He never won a race in NASCAR, only managing 28 top-10s and three third-place finishes. However, these years came during his late 30s and early 40s. How good could he have been if he had been in top equipment at the top of his game?

Dick Trickle

Another driver who was well-established and accomplished before he came to NASCAR was the cigarette-smoking “White Knight” himself, the late Dick Trickle. From the late 1950s through the 1980s, he made his hay on short tracks across the country, but mainly in his home state, Wisconsin. Official records vary, but upper estimates claim he won 1200 features during his time in late models.

He made occasional NASCAR starts throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but he was so good on the short track scene he never fully committed to NASCAR. In 1989, he joined NASCAR full-time replacing the retired Bobby Allison in the Stavola Brothers Miller High Life ride, and Trickle became NASCAR’s oldest Rookie of the Year at 48 years old. He never won a Cup Series race, but he did win two Xfinity Series races. He is another driver who you have to wonder what he could have done if he raced NASCAR full-time in his prime.

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