We talk all the time about how Denny Hamlin has the most NASCAR Cup Series race wins without a championship to his name. But how about the reigning champion who has run the most races without scoring another win?
While Red Byron, Bill Rexford, Joe Weatherly, Ned Jarrett, and Alan Kulwicki never won again after winning their Cup Series championships, that record belongs to Kyle Larson, who, despite leading laps late in Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, is now riding a 51-race win drought dating back to May 2025.
As IndyCar fans remain quick to point out, he has yet to win another Cup Series race since crashing out of the 2025 Indy 500 (following two practice crashes).
Kyle Larson's historic drought continues
Larson did manage to win the 2025 Cup Series championship, which was notable for a couple reasons.
First of all, he somehow won it in a playoff format that rewarded wins, without actually winning a playoff race. Second of all, he kept Hamlin as the sport's winningest non-champion, thanks to a late controversial yellow and ensuing pit stop sequence. And third of all, the way by which he won the title finally put the nail in the old playoff format's coffin, even though Larson did actually score more points than any other driver throughout the entire season.
But from a big-picture standpoint, that championship was a temporary bandage masking the ongoing struggles of Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team, who ended the 2025 campaign already on a 24-race win drought. Now 27 races into the 2026 season, they continue to extend the all-time record for the longest win drought for a Cup champion.
The late Benny Parsons won the 1973 Cup Series championship, and he ended the season on a 10-race win drought. He didn't win any of the 30 races contested in 1974, before finally returning to victory lane in the 1975 season's second race, the Daytona 500, to end a 41-race winless streak, the all-time record for a reigning champion.
Of course, Parsons was not the reigning champion when he won the 1975 Daytona 500, so his streak technically stopped at 40 when then 1974 season concluded with Richard Petty's fifth championship. He also technically only went 30 races without winning as the reigning champion, a mark that was topped by the late Kyle Busch in 2020, when it took him until the 34th race to find victory lane.
Larson hasn't yet gone 30 races without a victory as the reigning series champion, but his 51-race win drought is the longest that anyone has ever been on at any point as reigning champion.
Larson's win drought could still grow to as high as 60 by the end of the year. If he doesn't win the 2026 championship, he won't be the reigning champion in 2027, much like Parsons wasn't in 1975, but in terms of consecutive races without a victory following a championship, that record-long streak could still be extended into the new year.
And of course, he could technically still win the 2026 title without actually winning a race from now until the end of the season, in which case he would enter a whole new tier of the discussion, opening 2027 on a 60-race win drought as a two-time reigning champion.
Larson is set to have another shot at finding victory lane this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, which is scheduled to host the Enjoy Illinois 300 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 13. Live coverage is set to be provided by USA Network.
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