5 NASCAR drivers who don't get enough credit

 5 NASCAR drivers who don’t get enough credit

By Brian Cotnoir

I’ll be honest; I don’t really know how to start this article off.   Throughout its history NASCAR has never been short on star power.  They’ve always had several drivers who compete week in and week out for wins and titles.   NASCAR has also had many drivers who showed potential early on, but then fizzled out (think Casey Atwood and Dylan Kwazneski).  Then there are the drivers, who made ripples in the sport, but did not make big splashes.  Some of them were quite successful in the lower-tier series, but as far as the Cup Series they had few accomplishments to show.   Some drivers made big careers out of being big fish in small ponds, others had everything going for them, but then it all got taken away from them.    Let’s look at 5 NASCAR drivers who don’t get enough credit.

1.) David Green

David Green’s most notable accomplishments in racing were winning the 1994 Busch Series Championship and winning a Busch Series race under caution after Mark Martin pulled into the pits form the lead on the white flag lap.  His brothers Mark and Jeff also raced in the Busch Series (his brother Jeff would win the 2000 championship and go on to race for years in the Cup Series).   David would actually finish runner up twice for the Busch Series championship in 1996 and 2003, while earning 22 Pole positions.   However, success didn’t follow David into the Cup Series.  His best finish in the Cup Series was a 12^th place with the fledgling Larry Hendrick Motorsports at Phoenix.

2.) Reed Sorenson

Georgia’s Reed Sorenson showed a lot of potential early on at Chip Ganassi Racing in the Grand National Series, but on the Cup side he failed to find similar successes.  However that was during a time when Ganassi was in lull, the fact that he managed to get some Top 5’s and Top 10’s is really impressive.   Sorenson would return to the Grand National Series with Braun Motorsports and was 3^rd in the championship standings when his team abruptly shut down with 5 races left in the 2011 season, leaving him to seek refuge at the underperforming McDonald Motorsports, where he would unfortunately drop to 5^th place in the final drivers’ standings.   Despite all that, he is still active on the NASCAR Cup Series grid after 15 seasons and races part-time for the likes of Premium Motorsports, Rick Ware Racing, Spire Motorsports, and Tommy Baldwin Racing.

3.)  Jason Keller

Jason Keller is probably the best Grand National Series driver of the 1990’s to Never Win a Championship.    Keller made his start in the Grand National Series in 1991 and ran part-time until the end of the 1993 season.  In 1995, driving for his own team, Keller scored his first win at Indianapolis Raceway Park, and finished 4^th in the final drivers’ standings.   In 2000, Keller’s team would be merged with the dominant ppc Racing team.    In 11 full-time season in the Grand National Series, Keller won 10 races, and finished runner-up to the championship twice.  Keller, wound up finishing in the Top 5 in the drivers standings five times in his career in his iconic #57 car which he drove for the majority of his career.  

After losing his ride at ppc Racing at the end of the 2005 season, Keller would run part-time in Grand National Series, but Keller would make a return to full-time driving in 2008 season.  Keller would finish 8^th in the final drivers’ standings in 2009 driving for Baker Curb Racing, proving that the old man still had it after almost two decades in the sport.

4.) Ron Fellows

Ron Fellows only ran part-time in NASCAR, but in his brief time in NASCAR he left quite an impression.  Fellows was a champion in the sports car racing driving for the Corvette team in the GTS division at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Daytona.    In the 1990’s, some NASCAR teams began to tap Fellows road-racing talent to race at the only two road courses on the season, Watkins Glen and Sonoma Raceway/Sears Point.   Fellows was hired as a “Road Course Ringer” and drove for the likes of NEMCO Motorsports and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated.   In his second ever start in the Grand National Series, fellows won at Watkins Glen.  Between 1998 and 2001, Fellows won the race at Watkins Glen in 3-out-of-4 times.  He also won to NASCAR Truck Series races at Watkins Glen in 1997 & 1999.  His only NASCAR win that didn’t come at Watkins Glen was his final win in the NASCAR Grand National Series where he won a rain shortened race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Canada.  

Although he never won in the Cup Series he finished runner-up twice in 1999 & 2004 at Watkins Glen, and in his 25 Cup Series starts (all but one which were at Watkins Glen or Sonoma) he finished in the Top 10 five times!  If you wanted to win a Road Course race at Watkins Glen in the 1990’s, Ron Fellows was the man you’d have to beat.

5.) Mike McLaughlin

Mike McLaughlin was a popular driver up where I grew up in New England.  He had race modified’s against the likes of Jimmy Spencer, Jeff Fuller, Steve Park, and Mike Stefanik.  McLaughlin who was from New York State, drove the majority of his career for another New Yorker, Frank Cicci.  McLaughlin won 5-of-his-6 races while driving for Frank Cicci’s team, before running two-full time season for Coach Joe Gibbs in the NASCAR Grand National Series. 

McLaughlin finished in the Top 10 an astounding 110 times in the NASCAR Grand National Series, and was a perennial championship contender and fan favorite, finishing inside the Top 5 in the final drivers’ standings four-times in his career.  The man nicknamed “Magic Shoes” was a force to be reckoned with in the mid 1990’s.