1,000 Greatest Drivers: Rex White

The week American racing embarrassed itself yet again.

I can’t say I’m too excited for the 2026 racing season right now. 90% of everything I ever watched over the past 30 years live was NASCAR and IndyCar, although I like to think at this point that I’m informed enough to write about most other disciplines of racing at this point. Although for most of the 2010s, I was going on to anyone who would listen and many people who wouldn’t that IndyCar was way more interesting than NASCAR, I’ve definitely reversed my opinion on that in the 2020s, as the Cup schedules got more interesting again, the Cup drivers grew more likable, and Jim France started correcting some of Brian France’s mistakes. Meanwhile, in IndyCar, the road racing in the hybrid era has been pretty atrocious, the short oval racing has usually been pretty atrocious, it’s starting to seem unlikely that they’re ever going to run on a 1.5+ mile oval other than Indy again, we’re still getting fly-by-night street races nobody wants, and the conflict of interest between Roger Penske as series owner and team owner (and the fact that he’s been using said conflict of interest to get away with cheating in races) is getting insufferable. That’s not even getting into Santino Ferrucci, Sting Ray Robb, and Graham Rahal.

But boy, did both series have a hell of a lot of egg on their face this week. It was gross to me that Penske made a spectacle of firing Tim Cindric for the Indy 500 attenuator cheating scandal last year, and quietly rehired him last week. I wouldn’t have really cared if he never fired him at all, but making such a spectacle of it and then quietly re-hiring him at a time he hoped no one else would notice is a pretty dirty move. A few days later, it got even worse when Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to have an IndyCar street race around Washington, D.C., for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I don’t think this would’ve bothered me if it was IndyCar’s idea. But I really do not like the idea of races scheduled by executive fiat. It seems that most people’s issue is that Trump is doing it, but they’d actually be okay with it if some other President was doing it. Not I. Now, I hate Trump just as much as most people, but I would say many of the people bashing him do not hate his predecessors enough, as I don’t think most of them were significantly less grotesque. But even if it was a President I liked (the last President I don’t dislike is Jimmy Carter, and I still have some problems with him), I would be against this. Presidents should not be manufacturing events for private sports leagues. And how are they going to set up a street race in seven months? I also find it hilarious that the race is on August 23 because the July 4 weekend was already taken by Mid-Ohio.

IndyCar’s history of shooting itself in the foot reared its ugly head again as the Washington, D.C. race announcement came on literally the same day as the recent release of the Epstein Files. I admit I never took this Jeffrey Epstein stuff as seriously as I should have. Part of it is that I’ve literally had hecklers online in the YouTube comments sections of the Ultimate Typing Championship videos who called me a pedophile. It seems that throughout certain edgelord gamer circles, it’s become common for everybody to accuse everyone else of being pedophiles, which is one of the things I find insufferable about Internet culture. If people said all this shit about me, even though I never attempted to initiate sexual contact with anyone of any age in my life, it became harder for me to take such accusations seriously in general. Furthermore, I was not someone who was much into conspiracies when I was a kid. Back in the ‘90s, my dad watched all these early Fox shows about how we didn’t really land on the moon and so on, and I was not into it. The fact that so much of the early Epstein stuff also came from Pizzagate-adjacent sources made me ignore it for several years. To be honest, I’ve largely given up on trying to follow national news stories because I have no idea who to trust. When you grew up watching Peter Jennings, it’s hard to find basically anyone in the last 20 years who is as seemingly trustworthy as him, and I kind of dropped out of paying attention to current events to some extent. I prefer thinking about overall societal trends and big ideas rather than following each Atrocity du Jour. I’m not proud of it. I get everything from political subreddits now, but I’m sure I could do better than that. Once I fully understood the effects of all of Bill Clinton’s policies (NAFTA, the crime bill, welfare reform, deregulating the banks and the media), I certainly stopped liking him, but I didn’t get why everybody at a certain point was suddenly calling him a rapist because I struggled to take the Epstein stuff seriously.

However, over the last couple years, I slowly got it after too many years of being too credulous and wanting to believe the best in people. Brian Vickers’s connections to Epstein are certainly embarrassing for NASCAR, and it’s even more embarrassing that his car owner, Michael Waltrip, seemed to be seeking Epstein’s assistance in preventing Vickers from losing his sponsor. Do I blame NASCAR for this? No, not really. The drivers and teams are independent contractors, and it seems like NASCAR knew what was going on and did what they could to get Vickers and Waltrip out of the sport as quickly as possible. At the time, when NASCAR cracked down on Waltrip for the team orders “Spingate” scandal at Richmond in 2013, I was a little puzzled by the severity of the reaction because it’s not like we’d never seen team orders incidents in NASCAR like that before. Two years earlier in the same race, I always thought Paul Menard spun on purpose to help his teammate, Kevin Harvick, eventually win after Jeff Gordon had passed him for the lead (which did happen), and there were no penalties. Granted, the 2011 incident had no playoff implications except for Gordon and Harvick’s bonus points, and the 2013 incident did, but the reactions seemed inconsistent. Now, with this context, I can only assume NASCAR was really cracking down on Waltrip for the Epstein connections, and that’s why they came down so hard on Michael Waltrip Racing in 2013 and ignored Richard Childress Racing’s suspiciously similar infraction in 2011. Was Spingate worthy of a penalty? Sure. But I don’t think that’s what the penalty was about now. I think NASCAR was trying to get Waltrip (and any stink of Epstein) out of the sport and they succeeded, and I approve of it. Same thing with Vickers’s supposed “blood clot” the next year that ended his career. I don’t think that was a blood clot anymore. I guess I’ve wised up in my old age.

After all of that stuff, do I really feel like watching or listening to any races in either series right now? Not a lot, although I think NASCAR comes out looking marginally better, since although I’m sure they as an organization are still pro-Trump, they at least seemed to be pushing against the Epstein stuff, as opposed to IndyCar, which announced its Trump-sanctioned race the same day the latest files were released. Right now, I’m enjoying my book research more than I am current racing, but I guess that’s pretty consistent for me. When I was writing my typing book, I enjoyed writing that much more than I enjoyed any typing competitions, too.

I finish off the month of January by going over the third driver who died in 2025, who I had as a lock for my 1,000 greatest drivers list, and I’m going to make this one free, too. If Greg Biffle was somewhat forgotten and overshadowed, then Rex White was even more so. Although he had the numbers and he pretty easily made the 50 Greatest Drivers List and the Hall of Fame, I basically never see anyone talking about him ever. He didn’t have the big flashy personality of a lot of his contemporaries (Curtis Turner, Junior Johnson, Fireball Roberts, Fred Lorenzen, Joe Weatherly, etc…) nor was he part of a multi-generational racing dynasty (Lee Petty/Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett, and Buck Baker), so he kind of faded into the background even though he had more wins than any driver in the Cup Series from 1958-1962 despite driving for a self-owned privateer operation that never had much funding. I get why he’s ignored. It’s not an era many people have much nostalgia for (although I would probably say the early ‘60s, when he peaked, probably had the best competition in Cup history before the modern era). I read through all his wins in my Greg Fielden 40 Years of Stock Car Racing books, and honestly, almost all his wins were really boring. The narrative about his career is honestly more interesting than any of his wins, so I focused more on that. Finally, people care more about the superspeedway wins in his period than the titles. I get it, because the superspeedway races had much deeper fields, and he only won one superspeedway race on fuel mileage. The thing is, I’m convinced his teams were not fast enough and had nowhere near powerful enough engines for him to compete on superspeedways. I don’t think it was a lack of talent on those tracks. I think he was much more like an Alan Kulwicki type of that era, albeit with a lot more wins. Yet, you hear far more about Kulwicki because his races were televised, and he died young. I imagine White is the champion people are second-most likely to forget if they were doing a Sporcle quiz or something, behind only Bill Rexford. But there are definitely several more famous champions than him who were worse. He deserved better, I think.

Also, I previously had his 1960 as E- instead of E since I didn’t like that season as much as the surrounding 1959, 1961, and 1962. I still don’t, but it should be E regardless. Even though he had significantly fewer laps led than the surrounding years (and that’s kind of hard to prove anyway, since there are races from that era that are missing lap leader data), he led all drivers in wins, top fives, top tens, and average finish, so yeah, I guess it should be an E. Especially since he had an underfunded owner-driver entry.

REX WHITE...…………………………USA

Born: August 17, 1929
Died: July 18, 2025

Best year: 1962
Best drive: 1962 Dixie 400 at Atlanta International Raceway

Probably both the most obscure and underrated NASCAR Cup Series champion since 1950, White was overshadowed in his heyday because he boasted neither a big, flashy personality nor a rich family pedigree, unlike most of his contemporaries. Additionally, his cars were seldom well-financed, meaning he rarely had powerful enough engines to contend for superspeedway wins, which were arguably more highly valued back then than the championship. Nonetheless, despite his equipment deficit, a case of childhood polio that crippled his right leg, and his diminutive 5’4”, 135-pound stature, he achieved an unexpected level of success.

White remained competitive because his prime came in an era when most top teams had minimal factory backing after the manufacturers withdrew in the middle of the 1957 season before returning in the early ‘60s. He won his first two races for Bob Welborn’s brother Max and Lee Petty’s brother Julian in 1958. Mostly based on that season, he ranks 17th overall in my stock car model. Late in 1958, he became an owner-driver, usually co-owning his team with his crew chief Louis Clements. Future NASCAR winner James Hylton was one of his mechanics. White won five times in a part-time 1959 campaign, including three flag-to-flag wins.

In 1960, White took the points lead after previous points leader Richard Petty was disqualified for an illegal pit entry at the inaugural World 600, a points lead he wouldn’t relinquish. Since he also led in wins, top fives, top tens, and average finish, he likely still would’ve won the title without the penalty. The next year, he finished second in points, but improved in nearly all statistical categories. His part-time 1962 impresses me most because he passed Richard Petty to win at Hillsboro, won by nine laps at Hickory, then finally earned his first superspeedway win at Atlanta in a car that had no business winning. After Ford’s factory reentry in 1963, White could no longer compete, never won again, and shut down his team due to lack of funding. Surprisingly, the factory teams didn’t want him, although he made a handful of starts for Bud Moore in 1964. After breaking his back as a passenger in a car crash in Mexico, he never raced in Cup again.

White arguably gained more recognition in his golden years than he ever had in his heyday. The oldest living Cup champion for 23 years, White was still alive for his 2015 Hall of Fame induction, where he finally received some long-overdue attention. You can argue his 28 wins inflate him, particularly because there were only on average 23.6 starters in his wins. When I adjusted the win list for the competition level, he dropped to 20.7. Nonetheless, he still led all drivers in wins from 1958-1962, the early ‘60s definitely had better competition than the late ‘60s, and Richard Petty, Alan Kulwicki, and Tony Stewart were the only owner-driver champions since (and only Kulwicki also lacked significant factory backing). White deserves a more legendary reputation than he seems to have.

Stock car model: #17 of 319 (.210)

Teammate head-to-heads: 11-6 (0-1 vs. Johnny Beauchamp, 1-0 vs. Possum Jones, 2-1 vs. Jim Paschal, 2-0 vs. Ken Rush, 0-1 vs. Gwyn Staley, 0-1 vs. Speedy Thompson, 3-0 vs. Billy Wade, 3-2 vs. Bob Welborn)

Year-by-year: 1957: C, 1958: C+, 1959: E, 1960: E, 1961: E, 1962: E, 1963: C-