Top 5 Best NASCAR Cup Series drivers with 2 Career Wins

Top 5 Best NASCAR Cup Series drivers with 2 Career Wins

By Brian Cotnoir

Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice?   Well I already went through the best NASCAR drivers with only one career win, so I figured I’d talk about the best Cup Series drivers who managed to score 2 wins.  I also am planning to do this with the Xfinity Series & the Truck Series.  I won’t be doing this for every numerical increment/win total.   Just the ones I think I can make a good article from.  Let’s not waste any more time here’s the Top 5 Best NASCR Cup Series drivers with only 2 Career wins.

5.)  Jimmy Spencer

With almost 15 seasons of full-time driving experience in the NASCAR Cup Series, Jimmy Spencer truly was a journeyman and fan favorite of the sport.  Known as “Mr. Excitement”, Spencer only managed to score 2 career victories in the Cup Series.  Both wins came in a 4 week span in 1994 while driving for NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson.  He won the Pepsi 400 at Daytona, and 3 races later scored his final career Cup Series race at the other Superspeedway track, Talladega.  Spencer had a couple of runner-up finishes in his career and was a great short track racer.  He retired from NASCAR Cup Series after the 2006 season.

4.)  James Pardue

I never heard of James “Jimmy” Pardue before I started doing research for this article.  What I can tell you is he was from North Wilkesboro, NC, he drove car #54, and he had 2 career wins.   His first career win came at Southside Speedway in Richmond, Virginia.  His 2^nd career win came in 1963 and the track listed is “Dog Track Speedway” in Moyock, NC...I’m assuming they ran the race on an actual dog racing track.  Pardue’s career (and life) was cut short by a tragic auto accident during tire testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway; he did not survive.  He finished his career with 88 career Top 10’s and a career average finish of 13.5.

3.)  Juan Pablo Montoya

One of the most famous racecar drivers ever, Colombia’s Juan Pablo Montoya succeeded in everything he drove.  He had over 108 career Top 10 finishes in his career.  He finished a career best 8^th in the Final Driver Standings in 2009, without winning a race, and he drove for the same owner for the entirety of his full-time NASCAR career.  Montoya got his first win in the Cup Series as a Rookie in 2007 at Sonoma.  Three years later he’d score his second and final career win at the other road course track at Watkins Glen. 

He may not have ever won a race on an oval, but he was competitive on them.  He was a lot more competitive at oval racing than Marcos Ambrose and AJ Allmendinger, and for whatever reason he seemed to run really well at Dover, Bristol, and Richmond.

2.)  Elmo Langley

If you grew up watching NASCAR in the early 1990’s (like I did), you may remember the name Elmo Langley; he was the Official Pace Car driver for the Cup Series.  I remember this because as a kid, I thought it was silly there was a person with the same name as my favorite character on Sesame Street…but I digress.  Langley had been a pioneer in NASCAR making select starts as far back as 1954.  He ran—mostly—as an owner driver, and he scored his only two wins both in 1966 at the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds in South Carolina and Old Dominion Speedway in Virginia.     Langley finished in the Top 10 nearly 200 times in his career and finished a career best 5^th in the final drivers’ standings twice.

Langley is probably most infamously remembered for the way he died.  While doing a test run for NASCAR Exhibition race being run at the Suzuka Race Circuit in Japan, Langley suffered a heart attack; he was rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.  The race still went on and was won by Rusty Wallace.

1.)  James Hylton

James Hylton is another one of those unsung heroes of NASCAR, and until Jimmie Johnson came along was probably the most famous driver to race a car #48 in NASCAR.   Many of you may remember him from his days as an owner in the ARCA Series or the tragic death of him and his son in 2018 while driving their racecar hauler back from a race in Talladega, but Hylton was a force to be reckoned with on the track. 

In 1966, as a rookie, Hylton finshed 2^nd in the Final Point Standings to David Pearson, and easily won Rookie of the Year.   What’s more impressive; Hylton didn’t win a single race in his first season.   David Pearson won 15 races in route to the Championship and Richard Petty won 8, but could only muster a 3^rd place in the final points standings!  Hylton’s first win wouldn’t come until 1970 at the Richmond Fairgrounds, and he wouldn’t get win #2 until 2 years later at Talladega.  Meanwhile, over his career he’d rack up an impressive 140 Top 5 Finishes, and 301 Top 10 finishes in a career that spanned almost 3 decades!  Hylton wasn’t just some owner-driver who got lucky a couple of times, he was a superstar competing with the likes of Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Isaac, Cale Yarborough, and Bobby Allison!   Sure he didn’t have the same amounts of wins as them, but he still finished runner-up in the final points standings an amazing 3-times!  

I regret not including Hylton on my list of Best Cup Series Drivers who never won a championship, but there’s no doubt in my mind, that driver James Hylton is a NASCAR great.  He may not have the wins, but he absolutely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame someday.  I don’t think it’ll happen in the next decade, but I think looking at his statistics and how many Top 10 finishes he has (as of the publication of this article; February 20, 2020, he still has 5 more career Top 10’s than Kyle Busch, but I’m sure Busch will break that stat this season), but STILL Look at how impressive that is!  If 300 career Top 10 finishes isn’t good enough for the Hall of Fame, I don’t know what is?