The NASCAR Cup Series has seen plenty of superstars come through its ranks throughout its 77-year history. But for each top prospect who became a champion or regular race winner, there are also those who never panned out at all.
The word "bust" is one of the most commonly misused terms in sports. Typically, it refers to anyone who didn't meet their original expectations. But a true bust isn't someone like Erik Jones or Cole Custer, who at the end of the day are Cup Series race winners and lower-level champions. It's a driver who entirely burned out, despite entering the ranks with immense hype.
Active Cup Series drivers, with one exception of a veteran with extremely minimal upside, will not appear on this list (you're off the hook for now, Ty Gibbs). Nor will Kenny Irwin Jr., who struggled to live up to the billing during his first three Cup seasons but suffered a fatal crash before he had a chance to redeem himself.
But that's enough disclaimers. Here are the top 10 biggest busts in NASCAR history.
10. Danica Patrick
Patrick can only be considered a bust in the sense of the publicity surrounding her, rather than anyone's rational expectations. Everyone knew she was going to be a disaster in NASCAR, given the fates of most other aging open-wheel crossovers, and for five years she was the biggest running meme of the Cup Series.
In 191 career starts with top-tier Stewart-Haas Racing, Patrick scored only seven top 10 finishes, zero top five finishes, and had a best points result of 24th. But she did give us the legendary Rule No. 1 of stock car racing: learn how to wreck somebody without wrecking yourself.
9. Scott Speed
One of the most under-the-radar inexplicable moves in modern Cup Series memory came when Team Red Bull pushed out A.J. Allmendinger in the midst of a breakout season in 2008. The reason why was so that the team had a chance to give the ride to former Formula 1 competitor Scott Speed.
It didn't go so well. Speed only lasted two full seasons in Cup, finishing no better than 30th in points. Red Bull shut down their NASCAR operations after 2011, despite achieving moderate success with Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne.
8. Ty Dillon
When Austin Dillon was moving up the lower-level ranks, winning championships in the Truck Series and Nationwide Series, the rumblings were that his younger brother Ty was going to be even better. It didn't quite turn out that way.
The younger Dillon never won a title in either developmental series, nor has he ever won a Cup Series race in 281 career starts. That's highly unlikely to change, and if not for his last name, his time at the top level would have ended years ago.
7. Chandler Smith
There was a time in the late 2010s when another massively overused sports word was thrown around to describe Chandler Smith: "generational". His anticipated debut at the national level came at the age of 16, and it was expected that before too long, he'd follow in the footsteps of Jones and Christopher Bell as Toyota's next can't-miss Cup Series prospect.
It's now 2025 and Smith still hasn't made it to Cup, beyond three part-time starts in 2023. He's found moderate success in the Xfinity Series and Truck Series, but he hasn't been dominant by any means, and he's left multiple teams on bad terms. He seems destined to spend his career as a lower-series lifer.
6. Gray Gaulding
It may be slightly unfair to Gaulding to have him on this list, given the fact that he never had very many decent opportunities. But for someone who made his Cup Series debut at age 18, he sure fizzled out fast.
Gaulding was considered a blue-chip prospect while he was at the regional level. He instead spent the majority of his career in the top three series bouncing between low-tier organizations, where he never exactly punched above his weight. He hasn't been heard from ever since a 2024 domestic violence arrest.
5. Dario Franchitti
Like Patrick and Speed, Franchitti was another open-wheel crossover who fell flat on his face in stock cars. In his case, he left IndyCar in the middle of his championship-winning prime to join Chip Ganassi's Cup Series team in 2008. But instead of replicating the success of teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, he was out of NASCAR by the end of his rookie season.
Franchitti went back to what he was good at and won three more consecutive IndyCar titles between 2009 and 2011. He's an all-time great in the open-wheel world. But in NASCAR, he was a fish out of water.
4. Casey Atwood
After the meteoric rise of Jeff Gordon in the mid-1990s, every Cup Series team wanted to find the next game-changing young NASCAR superstar. The four-time champion's crew chief, Ray Evernham, was among those scouting for talent after transitioning from the pit box into team ownership, and he landed on Atwood as his next big project.
The Tennessee native showed some flashes of potential, but Evernham got impatient with his development and sent him to satellite team Ultra Motorsports after only one year. A season later, he was out of the Cup Series. He's often considered the biggest bust in NASCAR history, but make no mistake: there were a few who were bigger.
3. Dylan Kwasniewski
In the early 2010s, NASCAR's regional levels boasted what was considered one of the most talented crops of future superstars the sport had ever seen. The group included Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, and... two-time K&N (now ARCA East/West) champ Dylan Kwasniewski. Some considered him to have more upside than all of them.
But Kwasniewski's lone Nationwide Series season was such a disaster that he never got another one. He recorded only three top 10 finishes while accumulating a fortune's worth in wadded up equipment, and his career was over before it even began. Maybe he could've improved with time, but we'll never know.
2. Rob Moroso
At the start of this list, a disclaimer was made that a driver who won a national series championship doesn't qualify as a bust. Additionally, it would be insensitive to include someone whose career (and life) was cut short before they could reach their potential.
An exception can be made for Moroso in both regards, because of the astronomically stupid decision that led to his death in 1990. Both he and a young woman who he struck head-on were killed in a road accident in which the Cup Series rookie was driving with a BAC level of .22. He had the whole world in front of him, and he threw it all away.
1. Shane Hmiel
What can qualify a driver as an even bigger bust than Moroso? How about someone who received chance after chance to get his act together, and yet couldn't help himself from repeatedly sabotaging his own career.
That someone was Shane Hmiel. He had the talent to be a Cup Series star. But his reckless driving style caused him enough trouble, and multiple substance abuse violations ultimately led to a permanent ban from the sport in 2005. He later dabbled in open-wheel and dirt racing endeavors, until he was tragically paralyzed in a USAC crash in 2010.
To his credit, Hmiel underwent a long road to rehabilitation prior to his accident, which provided a fate no human deserves to suffer. He has spoken publicly about his struggles with addiction and mental health. But while he surely regrets it, his NASCAR career remains an all-time self-inflicted waste of what could have been.
"Honorable" mentions: Ricky Carmichael, Travis Pastrana, Todd Kluever, Christian Fittipaldi, Hailie Deegan