NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2026 Endorsements - Modern Era Ballot and Landmark Award

Today's column looks at the Landmark Award and the 10 nominees on the Modern Era Ballot.

It’s time for the third and final column on the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Let’s get to it.

On Wednesday, I published my column looking at the Pioneer ballot. Please take a look at that by clicking here.

Landmark Award

Now, this is something fans cannot vote on; only the voters may.

The nominees for the Landmark Award are:

Alvin Hawkins (Flagman, Bowman Gray Stadium founder and operator)

Lesa France Kennedy (NASCAR EVP)

Dr. Joseph Mattioli (Pocono Raceway founder)

Les Richter (Manager of Riverside Raceway, Chairman of IROC, VP of ISC, Senior Vice President of operations for NASCAR)

Humpy Wheeler (President/General Manager/P.T. Barnum of Charlotte Motor Speedway)

I’m not even going to bother with an analysis. Richter would probably win this had Wheeler not been nominated for the award.

Humpy is very clearly above the field in this category and completely revolutionized the track promoting game, to the point to where I actually disagree of his nomination here. Rather, I’d have seen how he fared on the regular modern era ballot first. Wheeler’s influences were vast, with a lot of SMI’s older guard of track presidents having a background working for him at Charlotte first.

The Modern Era Ballot

The nominees for the Modern Era Ballot:

Greg Biffle (Driver)

Neil Bonnett (Driver, Broadcasting)

Tim Brewer (Crew Chief, Broadcasting)

Jeff Burton (Driver, Broadcasting)

Kurt Busch (Driver)

Randy Dorton (Engine Builder)

Harry Gant (Driver)

Harry Hyde (Crew Chief, Engine Builder)

Randy LaJoie (Driver)

Jack Sprague (Driver)

I’ve decided to group these nominees into four categories: the bad, the mid, the good, and my two picks.

The Bad

I already wrote extensively about Jeff Burton in a separate piece from a couple of days ago. You can find that by clicking here.

There is a case to be made with Tim Brewer, but I don’t think it’s a particularly strong one to make. Yes, he won two championships and over 50 races. But he joined the Junior Johnson team and won the 1978 championship with Cale Yarborough after Yarborough had won the two championships prior without him.

Then in 1981, Brewer won the championship with Darrell Waltrip but was replaced by Jeff Hammond for 1982, who won that year’s championship with Waltrip. Then in 1985, Brewer returned to Johnson’s team for the second car with Neil Bonnett. Bonnett finished fourth in the standings as Waltrip won the championship again with Hammond.

Brewer won just five Cup races when he wasn’t working for Johnson, which is particularly damning. Johnson was very involved with his teams and performed a lot of the duties that modern crew chiefs do, having the final call for strategy and car adjustments.

Hammond also had a much longer and more successful media career than Brewer did. There are so many other crew chiefs that have stronger resumes but haven’t been nominated, chief among them being Jimmy Fennig, Andy Petree, Greg Zipadelli, Ernie Elliott, Jimmy Makar, and Larry McReynolds.

Randy LaJoie has an argument in that he did win two NASCAR Xfinity Series championships. But that’s really all he has.

LaJoie only won 15 races at that level, he finished less than half of his starts in that series in the top 10, and he only had three seasons in the top 5 in points in eight full-time years on the circuit.

Look at his two championship seasons. In 1996, his main competition for the championship was David Green. Todd Bodine, Jeff Green, and Chad Little. Jason Keller, Jeff Purvis, Kevin Lepage, Phil Parsons, and Mike McLaughlin made up the rest of the top 10 in points. There is a single career Cup win among the entire top 10.

The next year, 1997, the top 10 were LaJoie, Bodine, Steve Park, McLaughlin, Elliott Sadler, Parsons, Buckshot Jones, Elton Sawyer, Tim Fedewa, and Hermie Sadler. That’s two years where I don’t think anybody besides LaJoie will be nominated for the Hall among the top 10 in points.

Then in 1998, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth blew past the rest of these losers. Both finished almost 400 points ahead of third in the points, McLaughlin, while LaJoie was over 900 points behind in fourth. There is nothing to this argument besides LaJoie winning two of the weakest seasons in series history and then immediately getting destroyed the second that two future Hall of Fame members joined the field full-time.

The Mid

One of the more interesting cases is Greg Biffle. Separately, I don’t think either his NXS record, or his Truck record, or his Cup record are good arguments. Together, though, there is definitely something there.

I think sometimes people forget just how sneaky good Biffle could be. In Cup points, he finished second in 2005, third in 2008, and fifth in 2012. He was the third man at Roush, but he still beat all of his teammates more times (three) than Burton (two), and that’s before Matt Kenseth and then Carl Edwards left.

Biffle’s big issue is that I think staying at Roush really, really hurt his career, as it did for Trevor Bayne. Per Jayski’s old team charts, Biffle’s contract was up at the end of 2014. Roush extended his contract mainly because Kenseth had already left and Edwards was leaving. Biffle would have been better of not signing that.

… is what I would say if he had any other options. Once Edwards signed with JGR, Biffle was stuck with no real viable choices outside of Roush. If Michael Waltrip Racing had known in advance that Brian Vickers would be out for 2015, he could have gotten in there. But that was his only choice, and that team was on the way down after Spingate in 2013. Still, I think Biffle did about as well as he could have in his career and has a shot at this.

Neil Bonnett has been very close to induction in the past, but recently he’s been losing support. He has now fallen out of the top half of the votes, and I’d be surprised if he recovers, as one of his strongest supporters, Bobby Allison, has now passed away.

Injuries and wrecks hurt Bonnett’s career. But it’s also very hard to justify inducting a driver who only had one top 5 finish in points and had fewer full-time seasons than many drivers had top 10 point finishes.

The tragedy of this nomination is that, had Bonnett stayed off the track and focused on broadcasting, with his level of skill he’d have a very good case and a very long career doing it. But he needed to drive, and that hunger cost him both his life and potentially his place in the Hall.

The Good

If engine builders are going to go into the Hall, the late Randy Dorton will get in eventually.

I don’t think enough can be said about that Hendrick engine shop back then. They toppled Richard Childress Racing as GM’s lead NASCAR team, and Dorton played a key role in it.

Darrell Waltrip mentioned in his autobiography that the single biggest regret of his career was not taking a sweetheart engine deal that Hendrick offered him when he left them to go form his own race team. Had he taken it, he literally would have spent less money to go faster.

Harry Hyde is one of those guys who should have been in years ago but were hurt by the Hall’s driver bias.

Longevity is not a common trait in crew chiefs, as we have seen this season with Rodney Childers leaving Spire Motorsports mid-year. But Hyde was able to win a championship and dominate short tracks with Bobby Isaac before coming back in the 1980s and threatening to turn NASCAR upside down with Tim Richmond before Richmond’s sudden downturn in health.

Like Dorton, who worked under Hyde for much of his early career, Hyde was a key cornerstone in the story of Hendrick Motorsports. Without him, there’s very little chance the team becomes the dynasty it is.

As with Dorton, if Truck drivers are going into the Hall, Jack Sprague will get in eventually. A lot of Truck drivers are now staying in that series for years, but even so, Sprague is still tied for third in overall victories.

As of press time, Sprague ranks second in career top 5 finishes (Matt Crafton needs one more to tie him), third in career top 10 finishes, third in career laps led, seventh in career average finish in spite of hacing more starts than all but one other driver in the top 10, and holds the career record in second-place finishes.

A lot of the drivers ahead of him in those rankings are future Hall of Famers (Kyle Busch, Crafton) or are already in the Hall (Ron Hornaday Jr.). Sprague was also a better qualifier than most Truck drivers, ranking third in career average start in spite of all of his 297 career starts.

There are four drivers that should be in the Hall due to their Truck accomplishments. Sprague is one of the four. Hornaday, Crafton, and Mike Skinner are the other three.

My Two Picks

Very few drivers have the roller coaster of a career that Kurt Busch has had. The last driver whom Dale Earnhardt flipped off in his career, Busch began his career as a rowdy kid, developed clear anger management issues, defied authority, was fired multiple times from multiple teams, became an outlaw, was accussed of domestic abuse (found not guilty) by a woman he accussed of being a secret agent… then he mellowed out and became a consistent winner and elder statesman for both NASCAR and his race teams in the last few years of his career.

I think one impressive season not a lot of people realize with Busch was 2019. Busch joined Chip Ganassi Racing to drive the organization’s No. 1 Chevrolet at a terrible time. The Chevrolet body was just not competitive at all. If we look at non-playoff standings, no Chevrolet finished in the top seven in points.

Kyle Larson, Busch’s teammate, finished eighth. Chase Elliott was ninth, while Busch was tenth. In a season in which Busch turned 41 years old, he was the third-best Chevrolet driver in his very first year with CGR. And the only two drivers ahead of him would be the next two Cup champions just entering the prime of their careers. This is pretty damn good.

Then there’s Handsome Harry Gant. Mr. September. The Skoal Bandit. Gant had a legendary late model career prior to joining the Cup ranks full-time at age 39 and had a very strong Cup career that matches up well with every other nominee besides Busch.

People know about that famous four-win streak at age 51 in 1991, but they don’t realize that Gant also finished fourth in points that season and then the next.

I did some research, and to my best knowledge, only Mark Martin (second in points in 2009) had a better points finish after turning 50, and not even Mark could say he had multiple top 5 finishes in points like Gant did.

Now it’s time to make your choice. The fan ballot for the Hall of Fame can be found by clicking here. The ballot will close on Sunday, so make sure to make your own picks soon.