Season Grades for NASCAR Drivers: Part II

Speedy Thompson

1951: C-
1952: E-
1953: E-
1954: C-
1955: C+
1956: E
1957: C+
1958: C+
1959: C
1960: C+

Cumulative points: 36

Like Jack Smith, Speedy Thompson was snubbed from the 50 and 75 Greatest Drivers lists primarily due to controversies that ultimately overshadowed their careers. In Smith’s case it was his racism towards Wendell Scott. In Thompson’s case, it was intentionally wrecking Herb Thomas on team orders from his car owner Carl Kiekhaefer, causing a wreck that injured Thomas so badly it effectively ended his career. A lot of people in my circles downgraded him for this reason, but this is admittedly unfair. Although Thompson’s wreck of Thomas handed his teammate Buck Baker the 1956 championship, Thompson barely ran worse than Baker. He only lost the head-to-head 13-11, won 8 races to Baker’s 14, and actually led 600 more laps than Baker exceeding 2,000 laps led for the entire season. Although he was probably inflated to some degree by Kiekhaefer’s dominance, he actually swept Thomas 5-0 in their shared races that year, so he was clearly an elite perfomer. He currently sits only barely behind Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin in my model, also suggesting he should be on my list. Furthermore, he was also a prolific winner on the modified tour at a time it really mattered, winning 33 races, including 17 in 1952. He probably should have made the 50/75 Greatest Drivers lists at very least, but I understand why few people wanted to vote for him.

Greg Biffle

1999: C
2000: C
2001: C
2002: C-
2003: C-
2004: C
2005: E
2006: C+
2008: C+
2009: C
2010: C+
2011: C-
2012: E-
2013: C

Cumulative points: 39

I remain firmly convinced that Biffle wasted many of his potential best seasons in the Busch Series and the Craftsman Truck Series since he was in his late 20s/30s competing against much younger drivers in those series. For a while, I thought those seasons might have been better than any of his Cup seasons outside of 2005, but I ended up changing my mind. Biffle definitely put up numbers from 1999-2002. Not only did he set the record for truck wins with nine (we’ll see if Corey Heim manages to challenge that but I don’t think he will), he also ranked second overall in my model in 2000 thanks to beating his future star teammate Kurt Busch for the championship and first overall in 2001 because he had a 5-2 record against Jeff Burton in the Busch Series, who ranked second in my model and first the year before. I toyed with placing all these seasons higher but couldn’t justify it. Of his four pre-Cup seasons, I think I like his 2002 least because he seemed to have much less competition that year than any of the others and he also had his lowest rating in my model. His Cup career is I think pretty straightforward and much less interesting.

Fonty Flock

1947: E
1948: E
1949: E
1950: C+
1951: E
1952: E-
1953: E-
1955: C+

Cumulative points: 56

Probably the most underrated driver in NASCAR Cup Series history, Flock was one of the best drivers of the ‘50s without question, but he never made the 75 Greatest Drivers list and he’ll never make the Hall of Fame when he probably should have made both. In 1947, Flock effectively won a proto-Cup title in the short-lived National Championship Stock Car Circuit, where he beat a field that included 1949 champion Red Byron, his brother Bob (who tied Byron for the most wins that year), Glenn Dunaway (who was listed as the winner of the first Cup race before being disqualified), and Marshall Teague. Stout competition in other words. In 1948, he won the most races in NASCAR’s inaugural Modified championship, winning 15 times while the champion Byron won only 11. In 1949, he won the Modified title and won more races than his brother Tim and Curtis Turner. In other words, he was putting up numbers comparable to any of the stars of the time but because some of his best seasons came in the NCSCC and the Modified Tour, he never got the respect he deserved. His Cup career was great too. He had something like 27 TNL as he tended to be very unlucky relative to his 19 wins. He dominated the 1951 Cup season by all accounts, but ended up losing the title to Herb Thomas because Thomas scored more points in the Southern 500 which carried too much weight towards the championship. I kind of think he is the best driver of this entire group, even over Tim Richmond.

Neil Bonnett

1977: C+
1978: C
1979: E-
1980: C+
1981: E
1982: C+
1983: E-
1984: C+
1985: E-
1986: C
1987: C-
1988: C+

Cumulative points: 45

Bonnett started out as Dave Marcis’s replacement for the Nord Krauskopf team before it was bought by conman J.D. Stacy. Although he didn’t do as well as Marcis for Krauskopf, he improved significantly after Stacy bought the team and he gave the team two of its four career wins (his other winner is coming up). That earned him a chance to replace David Pearson at the Wood Brothers, where he honestly wasn’t much worse than Pearson was in his later years there, especially in 1981 when he led the second-most laps despite still running part-time as the Wood Brothers did then. After leaving the Wood Brothers, he moved to RahMoc Motorsports in 1983, where he carried sponsorship from lesser conman Warner W. Hodgdon in a Junior Johnson satellite operation. He gave RahMoc its first two wins before his team merged into Johnson’s. He was pretty great in 1985 but underachieved the other two years. After the second Junior Johnson team shut down, he returned to RahMoc and won the team’s last two races thanks to a significant advantage from his Hoosier tires. He was already fading from relevance when Ernie Irvan triggered the massive pileup at Darlington in 1990 that caused Bonnett to suffer amnesia and effectively ended his career, but I ended up rating him more highly than I thought it would.

Kasey Kahne

2000: C
2004: C+
2005: C-
2006: E-
2007: C-
2008: C
2009: C+
2010: C-
2011: C+
2012: C
2013: C+
2014: C

Cumulative points: 28

After overachieving at Evernham Motorsports for years, many people predicted that he would eventually become a perennial championship contender if he ever landed a top-tier ride. He landed that top-tier ride with Hendrick Motorsports in 2012 and didn’t end up making much of an impact there, which has caused him to fade from memory somewhat, particularly because he never won a title or a Daytona 500. I tend to prefer his pre-Hendrick years to his Hendrick years. While I do think his 2006 is overrated (he certainly wasn’t the best driver because he won the most races; he mostly dominated those races because he had a dominant chassis that he repeatedly used to win intermediate races), I still think it’s his best season mainly because Kahne’s teammate Jeremy Mayfield went from back-to-back Chase bids to falling out of the top 35 in points. I think his 2004, 2009, 2011, and 2013 seasons are all really lose to his 2006, but I didn’t feel good about calling any of them elite since he did seem to leave a lot on the table all of those years. He was consistently a top fifteen driver in his heyday and often a top ten driver, but rarely a top five driver. Nonetheless, he was good enough for long enough to just barely become a lock on the list. And I also decided to rate his 2000 season when he won the USAC Midget title.

Marvin Panch

1955: C-
1956: C+
1957: C+
1958: C
1960: C-
1961: C-
1962: C
1963: C+
1964: C+
1965: E-
1966: C-

Cumulative points: 25

Although he accumulated just barely enough points to attain lock status, I admit I don’t really get it. I don’t get why Panch made the original 50 Greatest Drivers list when for example Jim Paschal, Fonty Flock, Dick Hutcherson, and Paul Goldsmith didn’t. I think Jack Smith and Speedy Thompson were better too but at least I get that they were omitted for moral reasons. Panch has a rating just barely above 0 in my model and even in 1957 when he had a six-win season, he only had a rating of .024 with 25 teammate comparisons. What Panch has and all these other drivers don’t have is a Daytona 500 win, but his 500 win in 1961 was not impressive as Fireball Roberts led 170 laps before blowing an engine and Panch inherited the win. Tiny Lund was then plucked out of obscurity to fill in for Panch at the Wood Brothers, where he honestly had a more convincing Daytona 500 win. Panch definitely did a little better for the Wood Brothers and helped them on their rise and those seasons impress me most. He earned his second and last marquee race win in the World 600 in 1966, but even there Richard Petty relief-drove for him at the end. Panch seems to me like a marginal driver, like a Clint Bowyer of the ‘60s (albeit a little better than Bowyer). He didn’t even win any NASCAR West Series titles, although he did win the obscure NASCAR Compact Championship in 1960. He had a long enough run to barely become a lock on my list, but I admit that I don’t see what the big deal was with him.

William Byron

2016: C
2017: C-
2019: C
2020: C-
2021: C+
2022: C+
2023: E
2024: C+
2025: E (pending)

Cumulative points: 25 (through 2024)

Just like Biffle, I gave Byron a C for his dominant truck season, which impresses me more than their later Busch/Xfinity titles. I’d have no joke considered Biffle and Byron for C+ ratings for their 1999/2016 if they’d won those titles, but alas, they didn’t. I think Byron’s 2019 was better than his 2020 because he seemed to have more speed in a year Hendrick was slower (in 2019, he won five poles while in 2020, he won zero and only won a drafting track race). The rest of his career is pretty straightforward, although I do want to say that I raised his 2022 from C to C+ in retrospect because he was very unlucky that year. Byron is certainly on an E pace right now since he is simultaneously the most consistent and most dominant driver. Even though Kyle Larson has more laps led, Byron is slightly ahead in CRL (2.55-2.43) because Larson’s laps led total is slightly inflated by dominating the 500-lap race. However, I haven’t been as impressed with Byron as that implies due to his lack of clutchness.

LeeRoy Yarbrough

1964: C+
1966: C
1967: C-
1968: E-
1969: E
1970: C

Cumulative points: 23

Ever since I read about how Yarbrough strangled his mother late in life, I haven’t had anything good to say about him. It does seem that there is a double standard here. While that incident wasn’t enough to keep Yarbrough off the 50 Greatest Drivers list, Jack Smith and Speedy Thompson were left off seemingly for morality reasons despite having in my opinion similar careers (and I honestly think Thompson’s is better). In 1969, Yarbrough was the first driver to win the Daytona 500, World 600, and Southern 500 in the same season and those races did tend to have deeper fields than the average field, but I’m not sure whether that makes that year better than Thompson leading over 2,000 laps led in 1956. I think much as in the case of Marvin Panch, he got overrated by his Daytona 500 win. It’s telling that nobody makes serious Hall of Fame cases for Panch or Yarbrough these days. Honestly, I think Yarbrough’s breakout is better viewed as the breakout for crew chief Herb Nab, who went on to a much better career in that role than Yarbrough did as a driver in my opinion (even though he seems to have been even more forgotten by the general public). Yarbrough does get some points for a decent IndyCar crossover, where he earned a 3rd-place finish at Trenton in 1971, but I didn’t think any of his IndyCar seasons were worth rating.

Dick Rathmann

1951: C-
1952: E-
1953: E-
1954: E-
1955: C
1959: C-
1961: C

Cumulative points: 21

Now best known as the brother of 1960 Indy 500 winner Jim Rathmann (they infamously swapped names so Jim could get an earlier start), Dick had a very underrated and respectable NASCAR career, winning 13 races from 1952-54. He gave all three teams he drove for their only wins, including a win from last at Oakland in 1954. A couple years later, he gave up his NASCAR license and switched to USAC, attempting to make a go of it in IndyCar racing. He was okay as an IndyCar driver, earning three poles and a top ten points finish in 1961, but he never led a lap. In IndyCar, he is most famous for winning the pole and setting the Indy 500 track record in 1958, but he didn’t even make it the first lap as second-place starter Ed Elisian spun in turn three, collecting Rathmann and 13 others in a crash that ultimately took the life of Pat O’Connor.

Tim Richmond

1982: C+
1983: C+
1984: C-
1985: C+
1986: E
1987: E

Cumulative points: 30

One of my subscribers argued on the former racing-reference comments section that Richmond’s 1982 season was better than his 1986 because he actually managed to win two races for J.D. Stacy’s crooked and poorly-managed team. While it’s true Mark Martin and Morgan Shepherd replaced him and did worse, Martin wasn’t a star yet and Shepherd was good but not great and I think Richmond started out primarily in NASCAR as a road course specialist and didn’t fully master ovals until later. I think what convinces me his 1982 was not as good as his 1986 is he failed to qualify for the Daytona 500 with crew chief Harry Hyde, whom he contended for the championship with when they were reunited in 1986. Overall, I do think Richmond is a little overrated. As great and versatile as he was, he had championship-winning crew chiefs every year from 1982-1986 (Dale Inman, Tim Brewer, Barry Dodson, and Harry Hyde) and he was not exactly a championship contender, not to mention that Rusty Wallace replaced him at Raymond Beadle’s team and he won a championship there himself. I do think his 1985 is significantly underrated because Dale Earnhardt wrecked him for the win in three short track races. His career effectively comes down to his dominance in 1986 and 1987 for me, when he was very impressive. Although Geoff Bodine essentially matched his dominance in 1986, Richmond’s 1987 was even more impressive as he no longer had Harry Hyde but still won his first two races despite missing the first third of the season while sick with AIDS in a year where the three Hendrick regulars only combined for one (stupid) win. I definitely think Richmond was elite in his Hendrick stint and he probably could have won either the 1989 or 1991 titles had he lived, but I’m less impressed by the years before that.