Sunday night Nascar held one of it’s premier races, known today as the All-Star Race. While the race has gone through many names (4 to be exact), it has a great deal of history from its venue to its winners. Here’s a few facts about the race that might interest Nascar fans.
– The All-Star raced stared in 1985 when it was known simply as “The Winston”, after Nascar’s sponsor Winston cigarettes.
– It has always been held at Charlotte/Lowes Motor Speedway, with the exception of the 2nd race which was held at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
– The driver to win the first race in the series was Darrell Waltrip for Junior Johnson Racing.
– One of our household favorites, Dale Jr. won in 2000 his rookie year,
– Another favorite Ryan Newman won in 2002
– And my most favorite Tony Stewart won in 2009
Now for the Most, Fastest, Slowest and Winning-est
– Most wins go to Dale Sr and Jeff Gordon with 3 wins each
– Mark Martin, Jimmy Johnson and Davey Allison have each won 2 times
– Davey Allison is the only driver to hold back to back wins
– In 1985 Darrell’s prize was $20k, the 2nd race won by Bill Elliott gave him a purse of $240k
– The purse prize has floated back and forth between $200 and $300k for most of it’s history.
– It hit 500k in 2000 when Dale Jr. won the prize
– It slowly increased over the next 2 years and hit $1 million in 2003. Jimmy Johnson took that home. Officially he won $1,017,604, Tony’s purse in 2009 was $1,033,656.
– The highest purse to date was $1,101,325 taken home by Mark Martin on his 2nd time winning the all star race
– The highest average speed for an All-Star race was 185mph, in 2001. Jeff Gordon won that race.
– The slowest race was in 2007, 89mph (geez..was the whole thing under caution?) Kevin Harvick took that trophy.
– Chevy has 14 wins, Ford 9, Dodge and Pontiac 1 a piece
– The winning-est team, no surprise here, Hendrick with 6 wins. Roush and Childress have 3 each.
– Geoff Bodine Racing (1994) and Stewart-Hass Racing (2009) are the only owner/driver teams to have won the All-Star race.
– Conspicuously missing from the list, Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota.
