5 Best Drivers who never won the Daytona 500

5 Best Drivers who never won the Daytona 500

By Brian H Cotnoir

In football the biggest accomplishment a player can achieve is winning the Super Bowl.  In baseball it's winning the World Series, and in Hockey it's hoisting the Stanley Cup.  All these events happen at the end of the season, but NASCAR is the only sport I know whose biggest event opening race of the season.   Winning the Daytona 500 is one of the biggest accomplishments a driver can achieve in NASCAR, and even if the only race you win in your career it cements your legacy as a Daytona 500 Champion.  The biggest names in the sport: Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson, and Bill Elliott have all won the Daytona 500.  However, many other well-known drivers in the sport have never won the Daytona 500 but have come oh so close and several occasions.  Today, I'm going to talk about 5 of those drivers who never who won just about everything in the sport, but never won the Daytona 500.

1.)  Joe Weatherly

Joe Weatherly was a pioneering driver in the sport.  In his 12 years in the sport, he won 25 Cup Series races, and 12 Convertible Division Races.  He won back-to-back-championships with Hall of Fame Car Owner/Crew Chief Bud Moore, but sadly never won the Daytona 500.   The closest he ever came was in a second-place finish in 1961, which he lost to Marvin Panch, and in 1962 he finished in third place.   Weatherly actually won his qualifying races the week before in 1961 and 1962 but didn't have quiet enough to make it to Victory Lane in the 500.   Weatherly tragically lost his life in an accident at Riverside Speedway in California in 1964 (it was the last race before Daytona Speedweeks Began).   His team owner, Bud Moore, still entered the Daytona 500 that year with driver Billy Wade.  Wade would finish 6th in the 1964 Daytona 500.


2.)  Charlie Glotzbach

"Charging" Charlie Glotzbach only won 4 Cup Series races, but he always ran well at the Superspeedways.  I would compare his performances at tracks like Daytona and Talladega to that of Michael Waltrip and Pete Hamilton.  In 1969, Glotzbach was leading the Daytona 500 on the White Flag Lap, when he was passed by LeeRoy Yarbrough.  Things only got worse for Glotzbach that year as he would be shot twice by a disgruntled former employee at his business.   Glotzbach recovered from injuries and continued to race.   The following year he won his qualifying race at Daytona but finished fourth in the Daytona 500 behind race winner Pete Hamilton, David Pearson, and Bobby Allison.  In 1972 Glotzbach finished runner-up again this time to A.J. Foyt and the Wood Brothers.


5 Awesome, but lesser-known racing stories (Pt .6)

3.)  Terry Labonte

Hall of Famer Terry Labonte has the unfortunate distinction of being a three-time runner-up in the Daytona 500.  In 1986 he finished 11 seconds behind race winner Geoff Bodine.  In 1990, he was involved in one of the most famous finishes in Daytona 500 history.  Going into the Final turn he was running in 3rd place behind race leader Dale Earnhardt and second place driver Derrike Cope.   Earnhardt cut a tire in the middle of turns 3-4 and Cope and Labonte flew by him.  Labonte challenge Cope, but in the end, Cope scored his and Whitcomb Racing's first career win in the NASCAR Cup Series.  In 1997, he finished second again Under Caution between his Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Rickey Craven.   Interestingly enough his younger brother, Bobby, would finish runner-up in the Daytona 500 the following year (also under Caution).  


4.)  Mark Martin

Mark Martin has had one of the most interesting and established careers in all of NASCAR.  Martin has the unfortunate distinction of being a 5-Timer Runner Up in the NASCAR Drivers Championship.  Just as heartbreaking came in 2007 when he lost the Daytona 500 on the front stretch to driver Kevin Harvick.   It is a race that many fans gripe about how close Mark Martin was to winning it all.   The closest he came to winning the Daytona 500 besides that was in 1995 and his final Daytona 500 start in 2013, where he finished 3rd place in both races.

5.)  Tony Stewart 

Tony Stewart, 3-time NASCAR Cup Series Champion, IndyCar Series Champion, IROC Champion, USAC Triple Crown Champion, two-time Brickyard 400 & Chili Bown Nationals Champion, AND the only driver to complete the entirety of both Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 in the same day... but sadly never a Daytona 500 Champion (at least as a driver).  Stewart Actually had a lot of success at the Daytona International Speedway.  He won at Daytona 18-times in his career (second to only Dale Earnhart.  He won in IROC, he the summer Daytona Race, he won Daytona qualifying races, and the Bud Shootout.  From 2005-2013 he won the Season Opening NASCAR Grand National Series 7-out-of-9 times, but for all the success Stewart had at Daytona on Saturday, it never translated out to success on Sunday.  Stewart finished 2nd to Dale Earnhardt Jr in 2004.  He had dominated in 2007, battling Kurt Busch for the lead, but then he got loose and wrecked.  The following year in 2008, he led the white flag lap, but would be passed the Penske duo of Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch and wound up in third.  Stewart did win the Daytona 500 in 2017, but this time as a Co-Owner, ironically enough, for driver Kurt Busch. 


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