Certain NASCAR drivers tend to have more annoying fans than others. Which drivers have the most annoying fanbases in the sport? Here is a top 5 list.
Some NASCAR drivers have far more annoying fanbases than others. Things that happen within the most annoying fanbases can include anything from defending a driver’s stupid actions, praising them as though they’re better than they are, giving them credit they don’t deserve, or simply thinking that because said driver is their driver, no one should be allowed to say anything negative about them. All of that is factored into these rankings.
Disclaimer: When going through this list, please keep in mind that this list is no way stereotyping all fans of any of these NASCAR drivers. For any sort of list, be it positive or negative, there has to be a #1, top 3, top 5, etc. This is simply a compilation of the top 5 factoring in concepts such as those mentioned in the first paragraph, which again, is in no way representing the entirety of any of the following five fanbases. Naturally, someone has to be #1.
Let’s get started with #5 on the list before making our way all the way to #1.
#5 – Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 24 Chevrolet
Chase Elliott came into the NASCAR Cup Series as a full-time driver at age 20 with arguably the sport’s top team in Hendrick Motorsports and took over the #24 Chevrolet driven by Jeff Gordon, who will forever be one of the all-time greats.
Because of whose ride he took over in addition to the fact that he is the great Bill Elliott’s son, Chase came into the Cup Series with a huge fanbase, one that has been likened to the initial fanbase of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was well-known thanks to the fact that his father, the late Dale Earnhardt, was one of three seven-time champions of the sport. Yes, Chase was the 2014 Xfinity Series champion, but that’s certainly not where all of his fans came from.
Chase has a great chance to be NASCAR’s next Most Popular Driver following the retirement of 14-time defending Most Popular Driver Award winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. After all, Chase’s father Bill holds the record with 16 Most Popular Driver Awards, and Chase did win the All-Star fan vote this season.
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But look at all of the other relatively young drivers who, unlike Elliott, have already won at least one race in the NASCAR Cup Series. And none of them have a fanbase as large as he does. Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Austin Dillon and Chris Buescher are a few, with the last three being drivers no one would ever compare to Elliott.
Sure, all of those drivers have driven in more career Cup Series races than Elliott has. But they have all won at least one race while Elliott was actually driving full-time, so the comparison is an accurate one.
Yet Elliott has far more fans than all of those drivers, and he is the driver who his fanbase considers has the best chance to be NASCAR’s next superstar. While that is certainly a possibility, he should actually win a race first before he’s talked about as a star, much less a superstar. After all, he’s at risk at not even making it into this season’s playoffs.
Some of those drivers listed above have little to no chance at becoming superstars, and they still have more victories than Elliott does. In 63 career Cup Series races thus far, he has yet to drive to Victory Lane, yet you’d think he was already a Cup Series champion by the way many of his fans talk about him.
#4 – Jimmie Johnson, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 48 Chevrolet
Jimmie Johnson is, to put it bluntly, an amazing driver. He is the only active driver with more than one Cup Series championship to his name, and he has more than all other active drivers combined with seven, which is tied with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the highest amount of all-time. Given the fact that he does not appear to be close to retiring, he could very well set the record with title #8 in the near future.
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The fact that he has cemented himself as a legend, however, is the only reason his fanbase is not higher on this list. If a non-NASCAR fan or just a casual viewer of the sport were to walk into a room full of Johnson fans discussing their driver, that fan would walk out thinking he is some sort of a god who no one will ever come close to approaching the greatness of, not only in NASCAR or any other motorsports but in all sports as well.
While he is a legend with seven championships, he still isn’t even the greatest NASCAR driver of all-time, and right now he isn’t even really close. His 83 victories are good for a 6th place tie in all-time wins, which is impressive, but it isn’t even half of the number of career wins record-holder Richard Petty has with 200.
Even seven more championships to go along with the seven he already has likely would not put him even in the ballpark of Petty’s win total, yet many Johnson fans claim he is the greatest to ever drive a race car even now. And let’s not forget that without the playoffs, Johnson would only be a three-time champion as opposed to a seven-time champion. It’s not like he’s that much better than any other driver, despite the fact that that’s what many of his fans believe.
#3 – Dale Earnhardt Jr., Hendrick Motorsports, No. 88 Chevrolet
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been voted the most popular driver in the NASCAR Cup Series for 14 years in a row now, and that 14 will likely become a 15 following this season, his final season as a full-time driver in the series. That is the case despite the fact that he is now in his 18th season as a full-time driver and has still never won a championship, and that will likely not change this season.
The 2017 season has been arguably the worst of his career so far, as he sits in 23rd place in the championship standings ahead of just one other driver driving for a top-tier team, that being Danica Patrick in 28th. He has finished just one of the first 22 races so far this season in the top 5, that being a 5th place finish at Texas.
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Yet despite the fact that he has never won a championship and has not won a race in over two years, he is by far the sport’s most popular driver, and his fanbase does not seem to understand that this has nothing to do with his actual on-track performance and everything to do with his last name thanks to the fact that his father Dale Earnhardt was a great as he was, winning seven championships before he was tragically killed in an accident at the end of the 2001 Daytona 500.
Earnhardt Jr.’s fans swear his popularity has everything to do with him and nothing to do with his father. Yet in 10 seasons driving for Hendrick Motorsports, the team that has been dominant in this era, winning 12 of the last 22 championships, Earnhardt Jr. has won just nine races.
Somehow, despite his lack of success relative to many other drivers, he is still far more popular than any other active driver in the sport, including former Cup Series champions Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and even seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, one of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates. And for some reason, many of his fans think it’s because of him alone.
#2 – Kyle Busch, Joe Gibbs Racing, No. 18 Toyota
Kyle Busch’s fanbase is annoying due to the fact that they defend the idiotic things he does no matter how idiotic they are. No matter how childish he acts, they defend him while ignoring the fact that he like every other professional athlete is supposed to be a role model for young fans. He is known for his idiotic actions both on and off the track, so that weighs heavily into this ranking.
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First off, let’s start out by visualizing something. Imagine taking a young child, maybe four, five, six or seven years old, to a NASCAR Cup Series race. The child has never watched a NASCAR race before, but he wants to pick a car to root for. Who is that child going to pick? The Lowe’s car? The Nationwide car? The Mobil 1 car? No; that child is going to pick the M&M’s or the Skittles car, just like all of the other youngsters in the crowd would.
So when the driver of that car, Kyle Busch, starts acting up after the race and this child is watching it unfold before his eyes and he sees that all of Busch’s actions are being defended by his fanbase no matter how childish they are, what is this teaching the child?
Here are a few examples of what I’m referring to when I say his fans defend him no matter what. When he drilled Ron Hornaday Jr. into the wall at Texas a few years ago, they defended him.
When he attempted to attack Joey Logano in the pits at Las Vegas for an accident Logano clearly did not cause, they defended him. When he devalued Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s maiden Cup Series win by referring to Talladega as not a “real race track”, they also defended him. And when he dropped the mic after sarcastically congratulating Austin Dillon on his maiden Cup Series win at Charlotte, they defended him as well.
It gets old when a driver’s fans are so focused on defending their driver and keeping a perfect image of that driver in their minds that they can’t accept the fact that he isn’t perfect and is doing a terrible job of being a role model for young fans. Seeing as how Busch is probably in the limelight more than any other driver for his imperfections, the fact that his fans continue to defend his frequent idiotic actions makes his fanbase the #2 most annoying fanbase in the sport.
#1 – Danica Patrick, Stewart-Haas Racing, No. 10 Ford
It’s sad that a driver as irrelevant as Danica Patrick has been from a competition standpoint has the most annoying fanbase in all of the Cup Series. The reason it’s the most annoying fanbase in the sport is actually due to the fact that she is irrelevant, specifically because they can’t accept the fact that she isn’t a great driver.
No matter what kind of facts and statistical evidence you present to her fans prove that she is completely undeserving of a ride with a top-tier organization, you get called a “hater” and they say things like “she beats half the men in the field every race,” two things that could not be further than the truth.
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First off, no, she doesn’t beat half the men in the field; she’s currently 28th in the standings out of 32 full-time drivers. The four drivers that she’s higher than is not half. Secondly, she is consistently the lowest driver in the standings among the drivers driving for top-tier teams. Statistics don’t hate.
In fact, in her five full-time seasons in the Cup Series, only once has another driver who was driving for a top-tier team finished lower than her in the standings. That driver was Tony Stewart in 2015, and he is now retired despite the fact that he is a three-time champion of the sport.
Yet for some reason Patrick’s fanbase thinks she still deserves her ride in the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, and she has never even finished in the top 5 in a single race much less win three championships.
How anyone can say Patrick deserves her ride with a top-tier organizations given the fact that she has just one top 10 finish in the last 86 races (10th place at Dover earlier this year) and just seven top 10 finishes in 176 races with no career top 5 finishes is beyond me, and it’s what makes her fanbase easily the most annoying in the sport.
Next: Pro-Danica excuses hold no water
Which NASCAR driver do you think has the most annoying fanbase? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow Beyond the Flag on both Instagram and Twitter. Also, don’t forget to follow along with Beyond the Flag for the latest news, opinions and analysis stemming from a number of different motorsports series. You don’t want to miss any of it.