NASCAR driver with 0 career wins could be crowned champion

The most successful active winless NASCAR driver has a chance to be crowned champion in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Phoenix Raceway.

The 2021 NASCAR championship weekend is upon us, and all three national series are set to crown their champions at Phoenix Raceway over the next three days.

This evening, the Truck Series title is set to be decided in a 150-lap race around the four-turn, 1.022-mile (1.645-kilometer) oval in Avondale, Arizona, and tomorrow evening, the Xfinity Series title is set to be decided in a 200-lap race at the track. Then on Sunday afternoon, the Cup Series title is set to be decided in a 312-lap event.

And one of the three champions crowned this weekend may end up being a driver with zero career wins to his name.

That is, zero career wins across all three NASCAR national series.

Under the current multi-round playoff format, the champion is the driver who qualifies for the Championship 4 and finishes the highest among the Championship 4 drivers in the season finale.

While the champion has always been the race winner in the Cup Series, this hasn’t always been the case in the other series, and this has opened the door for winless champions.

In 2019, a winless Matt Crafton won the Truck Series championship with a second place finish in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, simply by finishing ahead of the other three drivers who were still in the mix for the title. But Crafton had 14 career wins to his name at the time.

Austin Dillon also won the 2013 Xfinity Series title without a win to become the first ever winless champion of a NASCAR national series, but he had two career victories in the series, plus four in the Truck Series, to his name at the time.

Notably, this title was determined via a season-long, playoff-less format; Crafton is the only winless champion of the current playoff era.

But this Saturday night, Daniel Hemric has a chance to be crowned a NASCAR champion with zero career wins in more than 200 career starts across all three national series.

This Saturday night’s race is set to mark Hemric’s 120th career start in the Xfinity Series. He competed full-time in both 2017 and 2018 and qualified for the Championship 4 in both years (both times without any wins). He finished in fourth and third place in the championship standings, respectively.

NASCAR’s greatest ever winless driver has also made 38 career Cup Series starts, including 36 as a full-time driver in 2019, and 50 career Truck Series starts, including 46 in 2015 and 2016 (23 each) as a full-time driver. As a full-time driver, he has only once finished lower than seventh place in points (2019 Cup).

And as long as he finishes higher than Austin Cindric, A.J. Allmendinger and Noah Gragson tomorrow evening, he will become a champion in just his sixth full season despite being 0 for 208 in terms of actually finding victory lane.

Hemric finished third of these four drivers at Phoenix Raceway back in March; Cindric, the reigning series champion who won last year’s season finale at the track to secure the title, won the race.

The Xfinity Series season finale, the Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 200, is scheduled to take place on Saturday, November 6 (8:30 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network). Start your free trial of FuboTV today so you don’t miss any of the action!