Occasionally, the victor in a motor race isn’t the driver who crosses the line first. Formula One recently took a victory away from George Russell in Belgium, but NASCAR has also taken its’ fair share of wins away. These are the most interesting instances when NASCAR took wins away from Cup Series drivers.
The first NASCAR Cup Series race featured the winner getting disqualified. For some context, this series was known as the “Strictly Stock” division at the time, and the original concept was cars unaltered from the showroom floor. This meant almost any major change to the car was strictly illegal as it went against the series’s original premise.
Glenn Dunaway’s rear springs were modified to make his car faster when hauling moonshine. NASCAR took the win away and awarded it to Jim Roper. This was Roper’s only career Cup Series win.
The 1959 Daytona 500 is famous for its’ photo finish, but fewer people know that the official winner was not the one who was declared the winner on the day of the race. After battling back and forth throughout the final run of the race, Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp finished the race side by side, and both drove to Victory Lane. Originally, NASCAR declared Beauchamp the winner, but Petty protested the result to NASCAR.
Over the next few days, photographers sent in photos of the finish. Finally, three days after the race officially concluded, NASCAR declared that Petty won the 1959 Daytona 500 by roughly one yard. Beauchamp never won at Daytona, and his career ended after a terrifying crash with Petty during a 1961 Daytona 500 qualifying race.
Later in the 1959 season, Lee Petty protested another result, his son Richard’s first win. At Lakewood Speedway, Richard Petty was originally given credit for the win. However, Lee protested the result, arguing that he had lapped Richard during the race.
NASCAR sided with the elder Petty, and Richard was credited with a second-place finish. Ultimately, this became little more than a footnote as Richard went on to win 200 races and seven Championships.
In 1971, NASCAR hosted a race with no winner, and while Nascarman dives into the full story in the video above, we will give the cliff notes version. In essence, NASCAR had trouble filling out the fields at some races, so they would allow cars from the lower Grand American division to compete in Cup Series, then known as Grand National, events. However, these cars had a significant advantage on short tracks, and Bobby Allison caught on to this.
He drove a Grand American car to the win at Bowman Gray Stadium, a car that wasn’t up to the same spec as Grand National cars. After the race, NASCAR did not credit Allison or second-place finisher Richard Petty with the win. To this day, Allison’s win total is 84, tied for fourth all-time with archrival Darrell Waltrip.
Throughout its modern era, NASCAR shied away from taking wins away from drivers for inspection failures, preferring instead to hand out points penalties, declaring wins “encumbered” or hefty fines. That changed in the late 2010s when NASCAR reinstituted the practice of taking wins away.
It finally came into effect at the Cup level in 2022 at Pocono, when the top two finishers, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, failed post-race inspection. As a result, Chase Elliott, the third-place finisher, was given the win. He never led a lap during the race, and it’s unclear if Hamlin ever returned the trophy or checkered flag.
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