Rory McIlroy made history last weekend by winning the 2025 Masters Tournament. He completed his career Grand Slam after a long wait and became the sixth person ever to win all four major championships in golf. NASCAR has a similar Grand Slam of iconic races on its calendar as well. Notably, only a smaller number of people have managed to accomplish it.
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The Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, the Brickyard 400, and the Southern 500 are the four races that come together to create the NASCAR Grand Slam.
These events are also known as “Crown Jewel Races,” and only four drivers in history have won them all. The first one to do so was Jeff Gordon. The Hendrick Motorsports icon completed the challenge in 1997.
He has won 23 races in the four Grand Slam tracks throughout his career. The legendary Dale Earnhardt completed the achievement in 1998 by winning the Coca-Cola 600. Gordon won 18 times on these tracks. He was followed by Jimmie Johnson, who won the 2006 Coca-Cola 600 to tick all the boxes. Johnson, too, has 18 wins on these four tracks.
The fourth and final driver to reach the mark is Kevin Harvick. The former Stewart-Haas Racing icon completed the challenge in 2014, the year he won his Cup Series championship. He has won 11 times on Grand Slam tracks and has been followed into the list by none. Others are close to making the achievement, though.
Drivers who could achieve the NASCAR Grand Slam next
The two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch won the Southern 500 in 2008. He won the Brickyard 400 twice in 2015 and 2016. The Coca-Cola 600, too, fell into his lap in 2018. It is only the Daytona 500 that separates him from his Grand Slam. His best finish in the event was runner-up in 2019.
Brad Keselowski isn’t all that different. The RFK Racing co-owner won both the Southern 500 and the Brickyard 400 in 2018. He followed them up with a Coca-Cola 600 in 2020. The Daytona 500, however, still eludes him. He finished third in the race back in 2014, and it is the closest he has come to Victory Lane in it.
Denny Hamlin is a three-time winner of the Daytona 500. He won the Coca-Cola 600 in 2022 and the Southern 500 in 2017 and 2021. The Brickyard 400 win is what is missing from his resume. He finished the race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in third place three times. Add it to the short list of achievements the veteran hasn’t unlocked yet.
The hottest name on this list is Kyle Larson. The Hendrick Motorsports driver has won the Coca-Cola 600, the Southern 500, and the Brickyard 400. The Daytona 500 has remained out of his reach so far. The bright note is that he still has a long runway ahead of him, unlike the other three drivers in this list.
