Tyler Redick is currently the best ranked driver who has never won a race in a cup series. He is 15th in points coming to the weekly Coca-Cola 600, only after Xfiniti’s victory at Texas Motor Speedway. Although he missed the Cup victory, he finished second twice this year, in Darlington and Bristol. He led the sixth round this year.
Could Charlotte be the path on which Reddick proves to be a candidate?
On the ‘no’ side are three DNFs and three finishes in 30th place or worse in the last four races, plus more than his share of bad luck. Redick won the pole for the All-Star Open, but had to start from behind due to unapproved adjustments. After fighting for the front, he broke.
On the plus side, Reddick has the fifth highest average driver rating on Charlotte Motor Speedway. Two places in the top 10 in three races on the track give him an average finish of 10.33 - and both places in the top 10 came in at 600. His second goal in Charlotte is 14. He scored points in five of six stages in two Coca. -Cola 600 that he led, and he won in Charlotte in the Xfinite series.
But here’s another thing in his favor: Charlotte is the second most common location where drivers achieve their first victory in the Cup series.
Tracks with the most first victories
I started by identifying all the drivers who won the race between 1980-2022. This includes the last 95 of the 200 Cup Series winners to date. Then I determined the track on which each driver had his first victory to make the following plot:
If you assumed that superspeedway would keep statistics, you are half right.
- Daitona surpasses all other tracks. Fifteen drivers recorded their first victory there.
- Charlotte Motor Speedway equals Taladeg with nine wins.
- Bristol, Louden and Martinsville are tied in the far fourth place with five wins in the first games.
Daitona is responsible for 15.8% of all wins for the first time in this data set. Taken together, Daytona and Taladega have 25.2% victories, while Charlotte takes the credit by 9.5%. The three most likely tracks for the first win make up just over one-third of all wins for the first time.
But are all first-time winners equal?
High-ranking career paths and first victories
I shared a set of data, separating the drivers according to the highest rank at the end of the season that was achieved in their careers.
Focus first on the red bars, which mark drivers with one or more championships in the cup series. No one won their first race in Dayton, and only one (Brad Keselovski) won their first race in Taladega. Despite achieving more than a quarter of the first victories, the two superspeeds can boast only one series champion.
Charlotte Motor Speedway, on the other hand, has four potential Cup Series champions: Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte, Matt Kenset and David Pearson.
Bristol is in second place when it comes to future Cup Series champions with three drivers: Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Vallace and Kurt Busch.
This does not mean that victories on Dayton or Taladega are less important than victories on other tracks. It’s just that the nature of the races on these tracks (and the large number of cars taken out by accidents) affects a wider range of winners.
Of the 95 drivers represented, only four never finished more than 20 at the end of the season. Three of those four drivers achieved their first victories on superspeedways.
Career wins over the first track
If we examine how many career victories each driver has announced, we see again the differences between the superspeedway and Charlotte.
Of Dayton’s 15 winners, 12 (80%) have four or fewer career victories.
- For five drivers, winning Dayton was the only victory of their career.
- Five more drivers won the second victory.
- One driver finished with three and two with four victories.
- Two drivers who won more than four races won 10 and 19 races, respectively.
The numbers are comparable to Taladeg. Of the nine winners, seven (77.8%) had four or fewer career victories.
A victory in Charlotte does not guarantee a trip to the Hall of Fame, but the percentages are quite different from the superspeedway. Of Charlotte’s nine winners, only three (33%) have won four or fewer races in their careers.
What to see in Charlotte
After Redik, Daniel Suarez is the next best ranked driver (19th in points) without a victory in the Cup series. His teammate, Ross Chastain, is one of only two drivers with two wins this season, and Trackhouse Racing has been surprisingly strong this year. The downside is that Charlotte was not one of Suarez’s best trails, and, although he showed a rush of promise, he is tied in second place in the number of accidents this year with seven.
Redik and Suarez’s chances will depend on the nature of Sunday’s race, only the fourth on the 1.5-mile track without superspeedway. The next-generation car received rave reviews in Las Vegas, but encountered tire problems in Kansas and Texas. Goodiear said in his weekly press release that he continues to work with the teams regarding the appropriate minimum tire pressure and rear suspension settings.
But even without the new car, the last five 600-mile races on Charlotte Motor Speedway have been very different. Warnings varied between four and 16, accidents between one and 11, and the number of fines from seven to 25. This is relevant because the more drivers make mistakes or whose cars are damaged in accidents, the greater the chances of the remaining drivers winning.
And while a record number of passes for the lead have occurred in the last 10 rounds this year, the last five margins of victory on the Coca-Cola 600 ranged from 0.29 seconds to 10.05 seconds.