Who is the best and worst NASCAR driver? Breaking down career wrecks

Ever watch a NASCAR race and think to yourself, ‘Man, he wrecked again!?‘”

Well, thanks to the gambling site Bookies.com, you’ll now know whether or not your instincts are right or not. 

The site released it’s list of most wreck-prone NASCAR drivers this week, using the racing site racing-reference.info to examine a driver’s rate of “RAF” or “running at the finish.”

Now, I use this site every day of the week. It’s not perfect, mainly because just because you’re not running at the finish doesn’t mean you wrecked. It could be mechanical problems, or, ahem, your tire explodes and you get stuck in the grass (hey Chase!) three laps down. 

Regardless, it’s not a terrible metric to use. So, with that in mind, the driver who has the highest crash-rate in the NASCAR Cup Series is (according to this one site, of course) …

Cody Ware! 

Ware, according to Bookies, has a crash-rate of 33%, failing to finish in 22 of 66 career races through Dover earlier this month. 

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Of the longtime series regulars, though, it’s actually Michael McDowell — you know, the 2021 Daytona 500 winner — who actually has the highest percentage (35%) of failing to finish a race (he’s finished 263 of 404 career races). 

The caveat here, however, is McDowell ran for lesser teams early in his career — mainly during NASCAR’s infamous start-and-park era. According to Bookies, McDowell failed to finish 101 of 127 starts between 2009-13. 

Some other observations from the list:

Kevin Harvick has the best percentage, failing to finish just 5% of 765 career races. Yep, he’s just really, really good.