In honor of hockey’s goal-scoring record being broken, we look at the racing records that may — or may not — be unbreakable.
It’s been a good time to chase major sports records recently. In just the past few years, Tom Brady broke the NFL’s all-time record for passing yards, LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the highest-scoring player in NBA history and Novak Djokovic set a new mark for men’s tennis grand slams. Caitlin Clark became the all-time leading scorer — among women or men — in NCAA Division I basketball last February. And just this past Sunday, Alexander Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career record for goals, a mark that many had considered for the longest time to be unbreakable.
With all of that in mind, we thought it would be fun to look at NASCAR Cup Series records that may also get the same treatment sooner or later — and which ones are so impressive that they probably have no prayer of being broken in the future. In each category, we’ll look at both the all-time and modern (since 1972) marks, and sort them from most to least unbreakable. To help guide us on career records, we’ll also rely on a simplified version of what Bill James called the “Favorite Toy” career projection system, estimating how many years an active driver has left in his or her career*, and projecting where he or she would end up if they continued over their previous career pace.
Let’s get started with …
Career wins
All-time record: Richard Petty, 200
Modern record: Jeff Gordon, 93
Active leader: Kyle Busch, 63
It’s safe to say that nobody has a prayer of touching King Richard’s 200 career wins in the Cup Series, seeing as how it’s nearly double that of anyone else (David Pearson is No. 2 at 105) and nobody in the modern era is any higher than Jeff Gordon at 93. Even Gordon’s mark will be tough to top: If 40-year-old Kyle Busch has an estimated six more seasons left, he would only get to 81 at his career pace of wins per year — and that may be overstating his case, as Rowdy hasn’t won since 2023. Among younger drivers, 32-year-old Kyle Larson has the best shot, but with 30 career wins and around 11 seasons remaining, he’d need to average 5.8 wins per year to pass Gordon, a tall task that would require him to essentially replicate last season’s 6-win effort every year for over a decade.
Breakability: Impossible (for all-time record) to Low (for modern record)
Most wins in a season
All-time record: Richard Petty, 27 (1967)
Modern record: Richard Petty (1975) and Jeff Gordon (1998), tied at 13
Active best: Kyle Larson (2021), 10
Along the same lines, Petty’s single-season record of 27 wins is essentially impossible to break in today’s version of the sport — it would require a driver to win 75% of all races on the schedule, when the best drivers have only recorded top 10s (much less wins) at that frequency in a season just nine times this century. The modern-era co-record of 13 is theoretically more doable, and Larson had a double-digit win tally just a few years ago. But in the Next Gen era, nobody has more than six victories in a season (accomplished by William Byron in 2023 and Kyle Larson in 2024). Unless the cream is starting to rise higher in this, the fourth year of Next Gen, it’s hard to imagine someone will get to double digits again anytime soon, much less 13 wins in a season.
Breakability: Very Low
Career poles
All-time record: Richard Petty, 123
Modern record: Jeff Gordon, 89
Active leader: Denny Hamlin, 43
While not quite as unreachable as Petty’s 200 wins, the King’s 123 career poles probably isn’t being challenged anytime soon, either. And at least part of that is due to greater parity in car performance during the Next Gen era. While we saw double-digit pole seasons every few years during the 1970s through the mid-1980s, and it happened again three times during the 2000s — plus, Kyle Larson had a 12-pole season in 2021, the Gen 6 car’s swan song — we’ve never seen a Next Gen season with more front-of-the-field starts than Christopher Bell’s seven-pole season in 2023. That helps explain why Larson, who leads the active career projection at 69.8 poles, doesn’t figure to even come close to either Petty or Gordon.
Breakability: Very Low
Career championships
All-time record: Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty, tied at 7
Nobody has ever won more than seven Cup Series championships — and it took a trio of all-time greats to even reach that mark, in the form of The King, The Intimidator and ol’ Seven-Time himself. Since Johnson earned his seventh crown in 2016, Busch added a second title in 2019 — but none since — and Joey Logano won three, making him probably the only active driver with a realistic shot at joining the club here. At 35 years old, Logano projects to have around nine more seasons left, meaning he’d need to average one title every 2.3 seasons from here on out just to tie the record. That’s an incredibly high bar, especially with how wide-open the playoff format tends to be. But if anyone has the combination of skill, team support and favorable track selection late in the playoffs to make a run at it, it’s Logano. Even in the best-case scenario, though, it would require extending one of the best late-career surges in NASCAR history.
Breakability: Low
Consecutive years with at least 1 win
All-time record: Kyle Busch, 19 (2005-2023)
This one is interesting because it was broken recently, when Busch passed Petty’s record of 18 straight seasons with a victory (set from 1960-1977). Rowdy is a special talent, and he proved it by extending this streak across three different teams (!), when he moved from Hendrick to Gibbs and then to Childress, with an uninterrupted string of winning seasons at each stop. The consistency needed to maintain a streak that long is rare, though it’s worth noting that Logano (13 straight) and Brad Keselowski (11) have active streaks going as we speak. The way Brad K. has started the 2025 season, his run doesn’t figure to continue without a big turnaround this year; however, Logano has driven well enough (90.0 average Driver Rating) to be a winner, and no one would be surprised if he extends the streak to 14. Adding five more years after that will be difficult, but Logano is at least capable of it.
Breakability: Low to Moderate (but active)
Oldest race winner
All-time record: Harry Gant (1992), 52 years, 7 months and 6 days
“Handsome Harry” cemented his place in NASCAR history when he won the 1992 Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan at the ripe old age of 52, breaking Bobby Allison’s record for oldest race winner (set at age 50 in the 1988 Daytona 500). For Gant, it was his second win of the ’92 season, a remarkable accomplishment for his age, and he would remain a regular Cup driver for each of the next two seasons as well. No 50-year-old has won a Cup race since Mark Martin in 2009 at Loudon (at 50 years, 8 months and 11 days), so this one would seem unlikely to fall anytime soon. However, the success of 44-year-old Hamlin in 2025 is emblematic of just how much veteran talent is in the sport right now; combine it with improved fitness for older athletes in general, and it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility for someone to give Gant a chase.
Breakability: Low to Moderate
Win a race while leading every lap
Modern record: Cale Yarborough (1973 Southeastern 500 and 1978 Music City USA 420) and Jeff Burton (2000 Dura Lube 300 Sponsored by Kmart), tied at 100% laps led
In the modern era (since 1972), this feat has only happened three times: twice by Cale Yarborough in the 1970s and then by The Mayor, Jeff Burton, more than two decades later … but also more than two decades ago. The fact that it’s been 25 years and counting since we’ve seen someone win wire-to-wire might seem to indicate that this record would be difficult to match — but we think this one might be closer to falling than it appears. As recently as late last season, we saw Larson lead 92.4% of laps (462 of 500) at Bristol, with most of the missing laps led coming at the beginning of the race because teammate Alex Bowman was on pole. And then, just this past weekend at Darlington, William Byron led each of the first 243 laps before coming out behind in the shuffle on pit strategy and never getting the lead back. If a driver has the perfect combination of starting on pole with a dominant car and good luck on strategy, this club could potentially get a new member.
Breakability: Surprisingly moderate
Career top 10s
All-time record: Richard Petty, 712
Modern record: Jeff Gordon, 477
Active leader: Kyle Busch, 386
Like many of the other all-time records on this list, Petty set the overall bar so high as to be almost impossible for a present-day driver to reach. However, Gordon’s modern record of 477 top-10 finishes is a lot more doable for a handful of active drivers. Busch, for instance, is already within 91 of that mark; if he drives another six seasons, he’d need to average 15.2 top 10s a year, a level he’s matched in nine of the previous 10 years. (Granted, 2024 was an exception.) And if Rowdy can’t do it, three other drivers project to finish their careers within striking distance of Gordon: Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott, each of whom is on track to break 400 career top 10s and could get a shot at the modern record with a little good fortune.
Breakability: Moderate (for modern record)
Career race starts
All-time record: Richard Petty, 1,184
Modern record: Ricky Rudd, 906
Active leader: Kyle Busch, 722
While Petty will (once again) be tough to catch here, Ricky Rudd’s modern record of 906 races is a lot more feasible to reach. At the current 36-race Cup Series schedule length, Busch would need to run just 5.1 more full seasons, which would leave him at age 45 when he was nearing the record — a year older than Denny Hamlin is now, as the oldest regular driver in the Cup Series, but younger than Kevin Harvick was just a few years ago. So Rowdy could break this one if he just keeps driving … and so could the 35-year-old Logano. Because he started out so young, Joey is already at 587 career starts, meaning he would need 8.9 more full seasons to catch Rudd, something he could do before he even hits his mid-40s. As a driver who is still very much in his championship prime, don’t count out Logano for this record.
Breakability: Moderate to High (for modern record)
Career road-course wins
All-time record: Jeff Gordon, 9
Active leader: Chase Elliott, 7
Of all the records that might be broken soon, the career mark for road-course victories has to be near the top of the list. For one thing, Elliott is only a pair of wins away from tying Gordon’s all-time mark of nine — a much closer gap between the all-time and active leaders than other categories. And while Elliott hasn’t been as dominant a road-racer in the Next Gen era (he hasn’t won at a road course since the 2021 Road America race), he still has an average Driver Rating of 99.0 at road courses in the Next Gen, so he remains a threat here. That’s also true of Larson, Bell and Tyler Reddick, each of whom finishes their careers ahead of Gordon according to our simple projection. And that’s not even considering the fact that Shane Van Gisbergen (who already has one win and five top 10s in seven road/street starts) is an automatic favorite for every track of that type on the schedule, nor the sky-high potential of young road-racing phenom Connor Zilisch. Add in the increased number of road courses on the schedule, and this one feels destined to fall sooner rather than later.
Breakability: High
Career wins across all national series
All-time record: Kyle Busch, 232
OK, so this one is a little bit of a fake-out. But it’s the rare example of a total wins record that has actually fallen in recent memory: Kyle Busch grabbed overall career win No. 201 in March 2019 at the Martinsville Trucks race, passing Petty for the most career wins across all NASCAR national series. Yes, it’s a little bit of a silly record, accomplished as much through cleaning up in the Xfinity and Truck Series as at the Cup level — while all 200 wins by Petty were in Cup, nearly three-quarters of Busch’s wins were in series other than Cup:
Wins are wins, though. And while Busch has proven the breakability of this mark for active drivers by doing it himself, it’s unlikely that anyone else will ever make a run at his mark. In recent years, NASCAR has cut down on so-called “Buschwhacking” by Cup drivers in lower series – which is a good thing for developmental drivers hoping to move up the stock-car ladder, but bad for veterans hoping to accrue extra laps behind the wheel, and a few extra wins in the process.
Breakability: Already broken! But probably won’t be ever again.
* For those interested, the formula for remaining career seasons that seems to work best for NASCAR Cup Series drivers is calculated by: (29.5 – 0.6*(age)), with the stipulation that a regular driver can never have fewer than 1.5 remaining seasons, regardless of their age.